I got late check out so we spent the morning enjoying the Holiday Inn free breakfast and even doing a bit of schooling before heading out around noon. We had stuffed ourselves at the free breakfast so we really didn’t need lunch and we drove the rest of the day arriving at a Walmart about 50 miles south of Minneapolis to spend the night. We had finally driven northeast enough to dodge the heat and the weather was finally pleasantly cool
The next morning we drove up to Minneapolis and went to the Mall of America, the largest mall in the United States. With over 2 million square feet of retail space consisting of over 520 stores it would take over 8 ½ hours to visit every store for 1 minute each. It has 50 restaurants, an indoor amusement park with 24 rides, an aquarium, a go-cart track, two hotels and a movie theater. It is staffed by over 11,000 people and doesn’t have a heating system. Even in the coldest winter the body heat of all the visitors keeps this enormous mall heated. It is so big it has its own zip code.
Our first stop of course had to be the Nickelodeon Amusement park at the center of the mall. The mall itself is three floor of stores going around the Amusement park. Unlimited ride bands were $44 and Olivia spent the entire morning going on the rides. I enjoyed not having to pay an extra entry fee to watch her and the comfy 72 degrees indoor temperature while waiting for her to take the rides. We spent an inordinate amount of time in the Lego store and got plenty of exercise going walking around looking at the stores. Leaving just before the mall closed, Olivia was truly tuckered out.