Livin' By Faith: Our date continued....finally!

So, yeah....I kept you in suspense a tad longer than I had planned to. Guess that's my life right now so you'll just have to deal with it :)

So continue our date.....

Saturday we woke up and decided to get the cheapest thing on the room service menu since we've never had room service before...and now I know why we haven't ever had room service before...the bill was $25 for two small bowls of plain yogurt with a sprinkle of granola and some fruit! Whew!

After that was done we didn't have any plans for the day so I jumped on my phone and started searching for attractions in the cities. One site lead me to another and another and somehow I came across something that was called "Segway Tours". My scrolling stopped...wait...segway tours??? What is that?! I went over to their website, looked up the number and gave them a call.

I asked what it all entailed and if they still had openings for later that day. They did!! I signed us up and looked forward to 2:30 in the afternoon!

In the meantime we ate lunch at The Melting Pot downtown. We heard it was very good, and it was, but since I have fondued every year at Christmas for the last 29 years (or at least as long as I can remember) the "coolness" of it just wasn't there for us. I ordered steak and shrimp and Nathan fondued chicken, steak and shrimp. We were told that if we wanted the typical 4 course meal, that we should allow at least 2-1/2 hrs to eat. We didn't get that but it did seem like it took forever. We were one of two couples in the place since they just had opened for the day but the waitress definitely wasn't in any hurry. It seemed rather odd to us that it took so long to get our food because it's all raw! They don't even have to cook it, we cook it! So it should be all back there ready to be portioned onto your plate and brought out to you...but I guess they had to butcher the cow first before they brought me the steak ;)

We were going to have the fondue dessert but since we were running out of time and I didn't want to be late for our segway tour, we decided to bail. And Im glad we did because we were right on time for the tour.

So we got to the tour and before they even took your money, they made you try out the segway because some people just don't feel comfortable on it and therefore want to cancel their spot on the tour. We, of course, loved them and wanted to continue. They then told us to pick out our helmets and have a seat in front of the tv to watch a training video.

Nathan couldn't even look at me in my pink helmet because he burst out laughing every time. He said I looked like I was five....and he looked so much better, right? So we watched a 15-20 min video on segway safety and it was time to take them outside to test them out again. (The first hour or so of the 'tour' was training on how to ride the segway, get off and on, etc).

Do I look that goofy??

After training, we were on our way! There was about 30 or so of us, with 5 instructors. We drove mostly on sidewalks so we had to stay in a single file line. That was a lot of segways in a row. Most people that we drove past took our their cameras and snapped a few pictures.

The tour took a total of 3 hours and it was a distance of about 5 miles. We stopped at places along the way such as the St. Anthony falls, the Stone Arch bridge, Mill city museum (where we went in and had some refreshments), Guthrie museum, and a tour of Nichollet Island.

St. Anthony Falls

Stone Arch Bridge that was built by the railroad man James J Hill

Mill City Museum

Aren't we cute?!

Part of the line of segways going down the sidewalk

At one point during our ride we crossed this small street and I saw a few cars coming. They didn't seem like they were slowing down at all, and since I didn't want to get hit by a car, I slowed down and waited for them. In the meantime, Nathan, who was behind me, didn't see me slow down until it was too late. He turned at the very last second, went off the sidewalk into the grass and jumped the curb onto the street. He mangaged to do all that while staying on the segway and regaining control and really not missing a beat. On our next stop, one of the instructors came up to him and said "I just have to shake your hand, man...I've never, ever seen someone stay so calm and regain control of the segway during and after a situation like yours. Congratulations!" It was kinda funny :)

I was sad when we came around the corner and saw our starting point because we were having so much fun. I would recommend it to anyone! Their website is humanonastick.com Clever, I know :)

After that it was time to find another hotel (we needed to get out of downtown!) and found a marriott by the Mall of America. You remember that we are partial to Marriotts right? We only liked their beds so much that we ordered one and had it shipped to our camper...now you remember? Anyway, we took their free shuttle over to the mall to grab some grub and then back to the hotel to relax. We were upgraded to a king whirlpool suite because they ran out of kings, and we were happy to oblige.

Sunday, our last morning, we booked a brunch cruise on the Mississippi on the boat called Paradise Lady. It was a relaxing time and going through the largest lock on the mississippi was an experience. The food wasn't the greatest, but we could have probably guessed that before it started. After the 2 hour cruise was over, it was time to get back to reality and go pick up our kids. Ariella was the only one who seemed a little excited to see us, the boys were having too much fun with the other kids :)

Paradise Lady