After staying up till 4am looking up fun places to go in Minneapolis, I came up with this itinerary (google map plan): Mall of America, NWA Historic Museum, Sculpture Park, Institute of Art, Mill City Museum, Bell Natural History Museum, Waterfall at Minnehaha Park, Fort Snelling, back to Airport.  This is what I actually ended up doing:

• Walked around Mall of America with random girl, went on the Sponge Bob rollercoaster, walked around mall, window shopped – 2 hrs! How in the world did I spend 2 hrs in a mall, granted it’s one of the largest in the country.
• Went to Sculpture Park and took pictures with the cherry on the spoon. 
• Went to Institute of Arts – yes, I got sucked into the museum.  I get sucked into all museums.  Even though it was modern art, it was fascinating!  There was a gallery dedicated to children’s dark dreams (yes, creepy), graphic art, informatics, clay movie, Andy Warhol (awesome!)…

What I found even more interesting were the people I came across:

• Freshman from Vietnam, studying advertisement, also had a good 3 hrs of layover before going to Seattle, so she was my guide at Mall of America.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t convince her to ride the rollercoaster with me, so I rode it with a cute 9yo boy who said he rode it 30+ times already. - only person I got a name out of.
• Elderly man, smoking cigar, from Rochester, MN who I enlisted to help me take pictures at the Sculpture Park.  He invited me to walk around the park with him, but I think I ended up walking too fast and being in too much of a hurry.  Haha.
• A really nice man on a bike who guided me to the metro station.  I probably ruined his last day of good biking in MN.  He biked 1.5hr/day! How awesome is that?
• Lady who teaches kids with disabilities, wants to live in France, just bought “French for Dummies”, lived in Minneapolis for 30+ yrs, and told me the secret of mini jukeboxes and videos at the metro stations. 
• Recent high school graduate who’s taking a year to just play hockey, hoping to do college hockey next year.
• ICU nurse from Ohio hospital, discussed the awesomeness of electronic records w/ONE program