Wayne and Erika Pfeiler

Monday Erika had most of the day off from the conference, so we decided to take the light rail train to the Mall of America (MOA). The train ride was great, but confused me a bit. They had a machine to take your $1.50/person fare and spit out a ticket, but there were no gates or turnstiles to make sure you had a ticket. All the train stops were like this. Later I learned from a friend that sometimes they have security people walk through the train and hand out $150 fines if you try to ride without a valid ticket.

We arrived at the MOA and found ourselves in what looks like any other mall in America, just much bigger and with a theme park in the center. The mall is shaped like a boxy donut, mostly three levels high. There's a small 4th floor with a movie theatre and a few other shops. There is also an aquarium or something in the basement, but we didn't see it. We ate at our perennial favorite, Johnny Rockets on the 3rd floor, and watched the rides in the park. There were at least a couple roller coasters and many other rides in the park. It was loosely themed after the Peanuts cartoons.

We walked laps around each level, stopping at stores the looked like fun. Erika was asked to do some market research for a company who got opinions on movie trailers. I was too old to fit into the demographic they wanted, but I got to watch with Erika. They showed her a trailer for a movie called The Killing Floor. They had some horrible LCD monitors at the booth, and the glare from the skylights made it impossible to see most of the trailer. The dialog wasn't much help either, so we really couldn't make much opinion of the movie, much less tell the polling people what we thought should be added or removed to make it better. HAHA. Erika found a couple pairs of fun shoes, and we finished our laps around the mall and took a ride on the ferris wheel in the park.

Next I wanted to check out the IKEA store, which is just across the parking lots from the MOA. I've heard good things (and a few jokes) about IKEA, so I wanted to see what all the hype was about. We were feeling a bit peckish, so we had a quick bite at the cafe in the store before shopping. We both discovered a Ligonberry soda on tap that was pretty good. I liked it mixed with Sierra Mist. Then we grabbed a "Big Yellow Bag", a shopping list, pencil, and tape measure (as instructed) and headed upstairs to the showroom. It was big...very big. It took me about 2 minutes to realize the IKEA appeal. It's crazy cheap. I'm used to the prices at stores like Wal*Mart, Target, and places like that. At those stores, you'll get acceptable-quality particle-board furniture with wood-looking laminates for decent prices, and you'll assemble it yourself. At IKEA, you'll find solid wood furniture, at much better prices, and you'll still assemble it yourself. We quickly learned the shopping list we grabbed earlier was to write down the items we wanted to buy so we could find them later; they keep most of their stock downstairs. Oddly, they had the exact same Whirlpool stainless steel stove and microwave in a few of the showroom kitchens that we just installed in our kitchen earlier this year, except their's said "IKEA, by Whirlpool". We wanted to buy a bunch of stuff, but we knew we couldn't fit much into our luggage, so we just got a few small things. We're definately planning a trip to IKEA in Atlanta or Virginia sometime soon :)

After shopping, we took the train back to Mpls, and walked back to the hotel.