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Mulling over family trip destinations? The City of Lakes boasts endless family-friendly activities, from a healthy selection of museums to endless fresh air adventures. Add the three activities below to your list - your kids may even discover a passion for puppetry!

Photo by Manicosity / Flickr

1. In the Heart of the Beast, Minneapolis' very own puppet theater, offers colorful, friendly, Saturday morning puppet shows for kids, for a small suggested donation. Show leave the kids considering a future in puppetry? Stay afterwards for a Make-n-Take workshop!

2. Tracking down the local farmers' market is always a fantastic way to soak up some local culture, and even better, the Midtown Global Market hosts Wee Wednesdays: you and your little tyke can dig in to some free, educational programming and hands-on activities, and the little one will even be served a free lunch afterwards at a nearby restaurant.

3. Leave the bustle of the city behind and let the little ones play at fairies in the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden and Bird Sanctuary. Fifteen acres of preserved land make the Sanctuary the oldest public wildflower garden in the nation, and give brave adventurers plenty of space for exploring this Midwest wonderland.

Hello Minneapolis! Read Post

Minneapolis

Hello Minneapolis!

How do you travel on a budget of $150 a day? In Minneapolis, on the Fox Morning News I shared how.

Minneapolis on the cheap with kids Read Post

Budget Tips Minneapolis

Minneapolis on the cheap with kids

Big cities? They're expensive for traveling families, right? Not necessarily. In fact, often urban centers are the best places to find free and inexpensive things to do with kids. We found this was particularly the case in Minneapolis, where we recently stopped for a two-night stay on our Mississippi road trip. Here are seven things to do in this Minnesota city on the cheap with kids.
1) Slurp up a bowl of noodles at Jasmine Deli. This Vietnamese hole-in-the-wall makes up for its lack of atmosphere with tasty barbecue chicken sandwiches and steaming bowls of pho, chicken noodle soup. A family of four can eat here for $20.
2) Pick up picnic fixings at The Wedge. This food co-op is basically an indoor farmers market with piles of produce, most of it organic. Also, the deli stuffs everything from tofu to nitrate-free salami into sandwiches. The best picnic spot around may be at Hidden Falls Regional Park in neighboring St. Paul.
3) Ride the Como-Harriet Streetcar. The last bastion of the streetcar system runs between Lake Calhoun and Lake Harriett. It costs only $2.
4) Explore the Guthrie Theater. This architecture marvel rising above the Mississippi River is the place to see a play, but it also offers sweeping views of the area and lots of nooks and crannies for kids to explore. It's free to walk around.
5) Drive a virtual tugboat at the Minnesota Science Museum. It's all about hands-on exhibits at this science museum. Kids particularly like the Human Body Gallery and the the dinosaur lab in the Hall of Paleontology. Admission: free to $17.
6) Step inside (or outside) an art museum. The Minneapolis Institute of Arts is always free and houses an amazing collection ranging from a 2,000-year-old mummy to works by European masters such as Rembrandt and Monet. The largest urban sculpture garden in the country surrounds the Walker Art Center and there's no fee to browse its works.
7) Stroll around Lake Harriet. Circle this lake at sunset and then head up the hill to Sebastian Joe's for ice cream (two scoops, of course).

Mississippi Road Trip Day 4: Minneapolis Read Post

Minneapolis

Mississippi Road Trip Day 4: Minneapolis

The Rundown
High point of the day: My husband is a river scientist and so this trip down the Mississippi has special meaning for him. While I'm on the hunt for historic buildings and pie shops, he's more interested in dams, locks, fish ladders and geological formations. Because of him we received a private tour of the new Outdoor Stream Lab at the St. Anthony Falls Laboratory right on the Mississippi River. Researchers from all over the world conduct experiments on this re-creation of a stream that pulls water from the Mississippi. It's the only lab of this sort in the world, and even I, the non-scientist, find it interesting.
Sound bite of the day: Mary Presnail, 25, is one of the many student researchers at the Outdoor Stream Lab. Here she offers up a rather technical, though impressive, description of the research she's conducting at the lab.

Low point of the day: After our tour of the lab, we planned to walk along the Mississippi River and go for a swim at Lake Harriet Southeast Beach. But dark clouds suddenly swoop over the city and it starts raining. The kids are disappointed. So we opt for an indoor attraction, the Guthrie Theater, an architectural marvel rising above the Mississippi. New York Times writer Nicolai Ouroussoff called it a "a Modernist heaven on a former industrial strip along the riverfront.
Quote of the day: "This place is cool," says my 4-year-old son, as we're touring the Guthrie. "Maybe we could live here."
Photo of the day: The ninth floor of the Guthrie Theater.

Miles driven: 30
Total miles driven: 604
Minutes in car: 30 minutes
Total hours in car: 11 hours, 30 minutes

Weather: Hot and muggy in the morning; thunderstorms in the evening
Expenses

Hotel: $98 (Best Western Normandy Inn; comfy beds and warm cookies at night)
Hotel parking: $7
Breakfast: Free cookies (we saved them from the hotel's "cookies-and-milk" hour the night before)
Lunch: $25 (Tuggs Tavern, cowboy burger and chicken tenders; we split two entrées at this touristy joint on the Mississippi River)
Drinks: $2
Dinner: $16 (Jasmine Deli/grilled chicken sandwich, pho, and shrimp rolls.)

Thrifty Travel Fun: Minneapolis, MN

Hello Minneapolis!

Minneapolis on the cheap with kids

Mississippi Road Trip Day 4: Minneapolis

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