Minneapolis Housing Trip

Wow, the past week has been crazy! I’m just now getting a second to post about this trip. Last weekend Mitch’s new company flew us out to look for a place to live. While the weekend was fun and we loved exploring Minneapolis, it was stressful trying to find a home to rent in such a short amount of time (in a city we knew nothing about).

The trip was a whirlwind—2 1/2 days of trying to get to know the city, the suburbs, and find a place. It was a little crazy and we had a lot of appointments fall through and a bit of a panic attack where we thought we might not have a place to live, but in the end had a miracle occur and found the perfect home at the last minute. We are so grateful for prayer during times like this! The home is in a suburb of Minneapolis called Maple Grove, about 15-20 minutes away from Mitch’s office. More details on our house to come soon!

Below are some pictures of our trip. We loved Minneapolis! It was the coolest city. It reminded us of a mixture of Seattle and New England. It was big and busy and cool, but very kind and family friendly. We saw about 20 big corporate headquarter campuses there (General Mills, Target, Best Buy, 3M, United Healthcare, Ameriprise, and dozens more). There was diversity and shopping, and restaurants! Oh the restaurants. Local restaurants, not chains, fresh food, unique menus. And Twins Stadium. What a gorgeous field. I know two boys in my house who are very excited about Twins baseball this summer! We couldn’t get over how much we loved the city.

It should also be noted that there are really thousands of lakes in MN! Literally, you could not drive for more than 5 minutes without seeing a lake—whether you were on a freeway, in the suburbs, or in the city. Can you believe that? I always knew they had a lot of lakes but never realized how many.

Our first night we shopped in a cool little area about 10 minutes outside of downtown called St. Louis Park. Reminded me of Greenlake in Seattle. Lakes, shops, restaurants, small streets. We loved it.

We ran into my favorite paper store!

We stopped to get some cupcakes at Yum Bakery. This one had Bavarian cream on the inside with a chocolate ganache on top.

 

We Yelp-ed best breakfast restaurants in the city and found one of the top rated places just across the street from our hotel. It was delicious. They had eggs benedict done with either crab or smoked salmon. They had crepes and french toast with huckleberry compote. And fresh OJ. Mmm. We loved it. (ps, how funny is the name? Good Day Café, Bad Day Bar)

In the suburbs we happened upon this lovely street:

Later that evening after seeing some houses we met up with my friend Lizzy and her husband for dinner. We ate at a mozzarella bar/pizza place called Mozza Mio. We sampled dozens of cheeses and pizza and did a lot of catching up. They live in the city and have loved Minneapolis so far. We loved getting some advice about areas to live. Lizzy was also a natural with Genevieve and got her to take a bottle. Hallelujah!

The next morning, amid panic about not finding a place to live, we decided to go downtown to the Target Flagship store. What a beautiful site to see a Target in the middle of a city! I could seriously reconsider living in a city with kids if there was a Target close by.

Well it was a whirlwind trip, but we were able to find a home and commit to it just before we had to leave. We are so grateful for our prayers being answered about our home, and also that we loved Minneapolis. Bad news is, it was apparently very warm for this time of year when we went. I think when we move out there for good in a week and a half I’ll have a bit of a shock.