“I don’t think the real America is in New York or on the Pacific Coast; personally I like the middle west much better, places like North & South Dakota, Minneapolis and Saint Paul. There, I think, are the true Americans.” – Charles Chaplin

As we said goodbye to Chicago, we also split from the gang; the K’s staying in Chicago, the Z’s flying out with us to commence their journey to the Minnesota/Sth Dakota border. IT was a good time to get respite from each other for a few days after living in each others pockets for a while.

We D’s arrived in Minnesota and what appeared to be the remotest place on earth – Minneapolis on a public holiday. OK, Minneapolis is a small city/big town, but we arrived to streets void of vehicles, sidewalks with no pedestrians, and bars and restaurants closed.. It was a ghost town. Really weird.

But today was a different animal. School resumed post summer break, and businesses are again open. People roamed the streets and shops and bars were open and awaiting our custom. Becoming accustomed to street names in each city is made easy by their penchant for naming themin consecutive numbers eg First St, Second St, Third… But here, not only do they run these West-East running streets, they cross them with similarly named Avenues. So you can find yourself looking for Seven St Nth which intersects with Fifth Ave Sth – my head is spinning.

But there is an easier way to get about looking for street signs here. The Skywalk is a series of Ist Fl walkways that link every major public building and shopping centres. While other cities may have similar walkways, I believe this is the largest in the world. So no matter what the weather conditions, the locals can attend to their everyday needs without being exposed to the weather.

We had a bike ride along the Mississippi, having reestablished our relationship after losing the great river befor Memphis. A walk around town, while not big, was increasingly problematic as my princess is battling minor ailments to her feet. So its more of a shuffle and then a sitdown to recover, bandages applied,,, The issue I think she’ll unfortunately get worse before she gets better as we have another  2 weeks to go. So maybe we need more bike rides.

And why does everyone have to be so nice? Even the homeless show respect. Everone wishes yo a good day, all day everyday. And wheelchairs – an immediate observation is the high numb row wheelchairs around town – with many of them using the bike lanes as they whiz around town in the bike lanes.

Minneapolis may not be big in size but I’;m already feeling the love.