The skyways of St. Paul

I started a new job in downtown St. Paul last month and I am exploring the fascinating skyways.  There are many places to eat along with convenience shops, banks and ATMs, a florist, some card shops and dry cleaners within walking distance of my office.  And it’s all enclosed so you don’t have to worry about the weather, of which we have plenty.  It’s been great fun walking through the skyways and finding new things.  And you see some sights along the way, like our state capitol in a photo below.

There are a few of these maps posted along the way.  This one shows all the skyways and their reaches(in blue):

There are signs to direct you:

Crossing 6th Street:

Here’s an example of the enjoyment of the skyways when it comes to the weather.  It was a cloudy, rainy day but I took to the skyways knowing it didn’t matter.  I was not going to get wet!  I took some photos of the scenery and I ended up with two different focuses looking north from the same spot.  One focuses on the capitol, the other on the rain on the window.

There’s a food court about five minutes from my desk.  I have eaten at two of these places but I also found a great place for salads another five minutes further away.  Such fun!!

On the way back to the office you can see a nice courtyard complete with art in the form of sculpture.  This looks like a nice spot for when the weather is nice.  Bring your lunch and eat outside.  Ah, heaven…….

And on a warm day last week, my co-worker and I took a walk outside!!  When we returned we found a band playing music:

St. Paul is definitely an interesting place to work.  I’ve always wanted to work here and now I know why.  I’m going to keep exploring and perhaps have a skyways part 2 post in the future.  For now, I hope you’ve enjoyed your brief visit to a part of my new work life.

Early spring

We are greening up nicely here in the frozen tundra. I think it’s safe to say we are done with winter.  Yep, now May 3 will be the latest I’ve seen it snow here.  Used to be April 29, but not any more!  Meanwhile, I have a few things blooming in my yard and this weekend I’m making my first trip to the nursery!  I got a gift card for my favorite place so I’m going to get started with my potted plants.  What fun.

Below are some of the sights in my neighborhood right now.

Scillia

Some crocus:

More scillia, two days later:

Remember this rhubarb?

As of five days ago, it looked like this:

Very soon I can make rhubarb crisp!!

On one of our walks last weekend, it was so nice and still that I got some good photos of our ponds.

By next week all those trees will be filled in with leaves.  I just love the different shades of greens right now.  It’s so lovely.  For those of you that have spring right now, enjoy!!

Spring in the frozen tundra

It was a long wait but it’s finally here.  Spring in the frozen tundra.  We went past 70 degrees yesterday!!  And I took a few photos to share.  I got out my patio furniture:

Took a look around the yard, had some large branches to gather up.  One was laying on top of one of my early spring favorites, some sort of tulip. That branch was the first to be moved and it marked the beginning of gardening season.  It felt great to be in the warmth of the sun and starting on the yard clean-up.

That owl up there is to scare off the rodents.  That didn’t work too well as it was likely the rabbits that got my sand cherry shrub again. I also forgot to put a fence around it last fall to prevent them from chewing on the branches, again. Live and learn as they say. And maybe, just maybe, it’s too soon to say if it will make it or not.  Here’s hoping!

Here are some scillia, I only just learned the name of these lovely little “purplies” (that’s what I called them previously and may just continue to do) from my neighbor, whose scillia were already blooming.  These will open today I suspect:

The last of the snow:

Always my first blooms, the snowdrops:

And, you know, you just can’t keep rhubarb down around these parts.  My trusty rhubarb, that’s been moved a couple of times and still it returns every year without fail:

And here’s hubby’s close-up of it:

So, in a couple of weeks I should be taking this photo again:

The photo with our first rhubarb crisp of 2012 was taken on April 15.  Yes, we are a little behind this year but we’re finally on our way.  Spring has finally come to the frozen tundra!!  More photos to come.

What’s your favorite thing about spring?

Weekly and CBBH Photo Challenge: Color

More photo challenges! This time I’m combining two different challenges into one because they are very similar.  I love photos with color in them and I especially like photographing colorful plants and flowers.  I decided to use mostly newer photos with the exception of the Chihuly ceiling in the lobby of the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas.  It goes nicely with the Chihuly yellow “ball” (I am not sure what its actual name is so I’ve named it a ball) that hangs in the Minneapolis Institute of Art.  Most of these are flowers but there is one very colorful dessert: red velvet cake.  It was almost too pretty to eat!  The bouganvillea and hibiscus were photographed in Santa Monica, CA on our trip there last fall.  The orchids are from the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory in St. Paul, MN.

Bromeliad close-up

Please look here for more weekly photo challenges and here for more CBBH photo challenges or to create your own entry.  There are many excellent entries once again.

One last item.  For the CBBH photo challenge I’m linking two blogs that I’ve commented on in the last month.  I’ve been enjoying travel posts at Displaced Beach Bums. I found this one during one of my not so regular searches for blogs about Málaga.  This Beach Bum is quite the traveler and I’ve only just scratched the surface of her blog.  So many blogs, so little time.  But I’ve loved every post I’ve looked at so far.  Do have a look!

The Travel Wench is a blog I just started following.  Prompted by her following my blog, I had a quick look and another kindred traveler! Oh boy!  She has quite the bucket list too, go and have a look. I’m going to show her Málaga one day :)

Weekly photo challenge-a day in my life

Such an interesting theme this week!  I decided to not focus on one particular day, rather a typical day and a couple from recent days.  My cats are a source of joy every day so naturally they had to be part of this.  I just came back from visiting my mother in southern Florida.  My sister and I met there and spent a long weekend to celebrate Mom’s 90th birthday.  Since neither of us could be there next month for her actual birthday, we celebrated now.  We had so much fun!!  Laughing and cooking and eating and playing flute duets.  Here’s my gallery of photos from a particular day in the past month or so.

Fritz utterly relaxed

the boys await our steak dinner

Eddie hangin’ out

the buddies

happy 90th birthday Mom!!

winter sunrise in the twin cities 2013

Miss M’s synchro team competes earlier this month

Team Expression-Miss M’s synchro team

hunny on a recent dinner outing

I got a new job!!! A friend sent this to me :)

Oops, forgot to include a link to the original post so you can see other entries.  Click here to see others’ interpretations and enjoy!!

Hell’s Kitchen – Minneapolis, MN

We sure have interesting restaurant names here in the twin cities eh?  Here’s another one that we tried almost a month ago when some friends were here from northern Minnesota.  It was also their 28th anniversary.  How nice of them to spend it with us (?). Ha ha. They came down to see their daughter sing in a performance of Carmina Burana and wanted to get together with us too.  It just happened to be their anniversary too.

I had heard of this place a while ago and when I learned they were staying downtown I suggested it and everyone was amenable.  It’s in the basement so you really feel like you’re descending into hell!!  Plus, the place is decorated with dark colors and wait until you see what they have in the bathroom!  I will get to that in a bit.  We parked in a lot that was conveniently connected so we only were outside walking to/from the car to/from the elevator.  I love that about our downtowns.  Both have skyways connecting buildings and parking lots and the saavy skyway walker never is affected by the elements.  And we have a lot of those elements during the loooooong winter months here.  Here’s the entry – Hell’s Kitchen Damn Good Food:

The view from the top of the stairs:

Once you descend the stairs you find the place to check in where they sell Hell’s Kitchen items:

I was able to make a reservation online earlier in the day.  They only had 5:15 or 8:30 so 5:15 it was and we all got there about the same time.  We had a nice corner booth and it was cozy.  Here’s the view looking out from our booth:

There was a fabulous jazz band playing too!  I found that unusual since it was so early.  Usually music doesn’t start until later in the evening, so that was a pleasant surprise:

Here’s the interesting thing in the bathrooms (hubby told me they had similar portraits in the men’s bathroom).  There were three portraits which I’m guessing were a mother, father and child.  When you moved you got a different view.  A normal view:

And then the hellish view:

Here are the happy couple and a couple of diners (hubby and another friend of ours):

Hubby couldn’t help but notice familiar paintings on the walls.   I wouldn’t have known this, good thing he tagged along ;) They had Ralph Steadman paintings on the walls near our table so I took a couple of shots of them.  Ralph Steadman was Hunter Thompson’s illustrator and lookie, he has a website.

I haven’t even gotten to the wonderful food!! Alas, I forgot to take photos of the food.  I don’t recall what everyone else had but I do know that everyone was happy with their food.   I remember what I had and it was hellishly delicious!!  They serve breakfast items all day long and I was intrigued by their juevos rancheros which is described thusly: A crisp flour tortilla with buttery hash browns, spicy black beans, soft-scrambled eggs and a 3-cheese topping, all baked to a golden brown. Topped with hand-chopped salsa and a dollop of sour cream.  MMMMMM!! YUM!!

I highly recommend this restaurant and if you’re in Minneapolis and staying downtown, high tail it over here for some good eats!

Hell’s Kitchen

The Strip Club – St. Paul, MN

No, it’s not what you think it is!  This is the restaurant we decided to try for our anniversary this year.  Hubby had read about it and heard nothing but good things about it from everyone that we mentioned it to.  My meal was certainly delicious, however, I doubt that we will return.  For the kind of money that we spent along with the so-so service, it was disappointing enough for us to not want to return.

First thing, which is normal in any old neighborhood restaurant, is the parking.  It’s nonexistent and it’s never deterred us before. It is what it is.  We found a spot on the street about a block away, actually a pretty good spot!

You can see the mounds of snow we still have in the reflection, and that’s me taking the photo.

So far, so good.  Check out this cool staircase!  We had a nice spot upstairs and it’s a one way ride up those stairs.  I started up after taking this photo only to have to come back down to let another customer down the stairs.  I would have loved to sit at that private table by the windows next to the stairs.

As I mentioned, our food was good, but the service was not great for what we paid. We waited a long while for our drinks for example.  I did get some good photos.  Hubby had their strip steak.

I had the duck breast that came with a mixture of sweet and white potatoes.  It was quite yummy!

The waitress did mention that the chef likes to cook the duck on the rare side so suggested that I order it medium.  It was really medium rare which is what I prefer so that was a great tip!  We ordered the fries because we didn’t think there were any accompaniments with our meals.  So, I had a little more starch than I like to have.  But the fries were also yummy! They came with three different sauces: ketchup, a chipotle type sauce and a horse radish-tasting sauce.

So, all in all, a pretty good meal.   I decided I wanted dessert so we got a cream puff with vanilla ice cream and caramelized cashews with chocolate sauce.  Nice and light.

Hubby had ordered an espresso and asked if they had sugar cubes.  The waitress said they didn’t have cubes but had sugar packets.  But she forgot to bring them.  And typically when you make a reservation and mention you’re celebrating your anniversary they do something nice for you.  Perhaps a free drink or dessert.  They didn’t do anything so that was a teensy bit disappointing.  We did have a nice meal out and it was a nice anniversary. 22 years of wedded, er, bliss!!