Football season is FINALLY here. This weekend, our football team, Minnesota Vikings is playing Tampa Bay Buccaneers at home for the season opener, but University of Minnesota is also playing at home against Eastern Michigan, and the professional baseball team, Minnesota Twins is playing New York Mets. 3 teams, 3 home games. Time for a trip to Minneapolis.
Saturday, 9/9/23
With 3 games going on, the town is expectedly crazy. (We aren’t the only ones with this plan.) The airfare prices were high as was the hotel prices, so we decided to fly in Saturday morning, stay just one night, then fly home Sunday after the game. Pretty ambitious, but very exciting!
We hopped on the morning flight, and arrived at the Minneapolis Airport Terminal 1 shortly after 10am. Took the Blue Line to our hotel, Rand Tower and tried to check-in at 11am. They didn’t let us but they were able to store our luggage for us.
Baseball game starts at 1pm so we decided to get a little food in our belly. There are several restaurant options, we went with a German pub called Gluek’s.
Figured we’ll eat more food at the baseball game, we decided to share a beef stroganoff, which was perfect.
Gluek’s is a brewery also and even has gluten free beer!
We had some extra time so we walked around the baseball stadium and got some pictures.
Next we went in the stadium. This is my first time at Target Field and I was expecting peanuts and hot dogs. Boy was I wrong. The food options here were amazing!
I got a Caribe Soul Bowl which came with jerk chicken, yellow rice, plantains, cilantro and pineapple. All the ingredients were fresh!
Check out these Bloody Mary’s from Hrbek’s!
The food and drink choices here are really second to none. We had some awesome dipping dots too! The stadium also provides free charging for any type of device you got!
Our seats were in section 114, row 25, seat 1 and 2. These seats were awesome. They gave us coverage in case of rain and it was an aisle seat for easy in and out. It’s right behind the home plate but high enough to see everything.
Twins won the game with ease. One down. As we left the stadium, we noticed someone rented the Viking Limo.
Walking back to the hotel, we passed the Prince Mural.
Back at the hotel, our room is ready. Yay! Rand Tower is a killer location for ANYTHING in this town because it’s next to ALL THREE metro lines, and walking distance to both Target Field and US Bank Stadium. Rand Tower is also connected by the sky bridge system to many of the downtown buildings, like Nicollet Mall. The room we booked was the 1 King Guest Room with City View. We were given a room on the top floor and the room served us well, however, to access this room, we had to take two elevators.
Rand Tower is under the Marriott umbrella. The TV here does not have a casting option, and the streaming options were limited. The hotel claims they would provide you with an HDMI cable to connect to your own device (presumably a laptop), however, such cable was not present and when I called the front desk, they said they would send one up but they never did.
We had planned to have dinner during this time but after eating at the ball game, and all the traveling and drinking, we were pretty tired so we used this time to unwind in our room and watched some TV.
Next, we rode the line to Stadium Village to attend the next game, University of Minnesota vs Eastern Michigan, at the Huntington Bank Stadium.
Before walking into the stadium, we watched the band march, which was fun.
We decided to go with some Club Cambria seats. Which was comfortable, but the food options in the club were not the best and the lines to order the food was ridiculous. I would not get these seats again.
The good thing about Club Cambria (besides the comfortable seats) was that they gave us wristbands to go to the tunnel during the half, and go to the field after the game is over. We did the tunnel walk at half but skipped the field at the end because the game was so late.
Did I mention we won this game as well? Two down.
The food we ate at the stadium took care of dinner for us, although we could probably eat more but we were so tired at this point, we just want to go to sleep.
Sunday, 9/10/23
This morning, we started out with a visit to the Target nearby, then walked to the French restaurant, Chloe by Vincent, for some brunch. We were expecting a small menu because that’s what they told us when we booked this reservation, but this menu is REALLY small. We made do.
I’m glad we did, because the food was INCREDIBLE.
After breakfast, we walked to the US Bank Stadium. Our seats are in the Polaris Club.
This was a much better experience than the day before. There was very little lines for food or drinks. The seats were still very comfy too. There’s a live DJ who played my favorite hits.
Our seats were little too close to the field, but great nonetheless. Unfortunately, we lost to Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Now we have to make it back to the hotel to pick up our luggage. We walked by Giulia, and grabbed a few bites there.
Back at the airport. I can’t believe we were just here yesterday! This is crazy! The airport was kind of crowded, but if you go to the Sky Priority line (for Delta), you’ll move along very quickly. Combine that with Clear and TSA, we were inside the terminal in minutes. Now it’s time to go grab our free Bloody Mary at Ike’s!
To get your free Bloody Mary, you’ll have to have a membership for Priority Club, which gives you $15 credit to spend in Ike’s. The Bloody Mary (called The Weekender) is $14.50 so it is free after applying the credit, except for tip, which we were able to do on the card by letting the waiter run a tab of $0.01. Priority Club membership is free with many credit cards, such as the American Express Platinum card.
What an amazing weekend. Even though we lost the Vikings game, to watch 3 games in two days was so exhilarating and fun! I would do this again in a heartbeat!