So it turns out there’s a reason why the car number plates here are so homogeneous – there isn’t much to do in Minnesota! We started the day with high hopes that Minneapolis would be a great city that we could talk about since not many people come up here. However, after driving around the city centre for little more than 5 minutes we realised there wasn’t going to be much to talk about.

The main site listed in our handy guidebook was the Walker Art Centre and sculpture garden, so that was where we ended up in the late morning. The garden had a few intriguing sculptures, and an interesting piece of glass that allowed you to look through it and see your reflection at the same time. Afterwards, we drove to neighbouring St Paul and found that it was very similar to Minneapolis, but felt a bit less safe to be walking around. We saw some signs for a zoo so headed there, and it was probably the highlight of the day.

The zoo was called Como Park Zoo and Conservatory, because as well as a zoo it had a large conservatory attached. The whole place runs on donations so it was nice to save some money and still see the animals. Highlights included two large polar bears and a well-done primate enclosure.

For the remainder of the afternoon we ended up looking for a bank to change up travellers cheques. This turned out to be harder than planned since every bank required the cheque holder have an account with them. But if you are travelling you wouldn’t have an account would you?! We eventually found out that Walmart take them effectively as cash so we ended up doing several trips buying small items just to get the change!

Dinner was at the local Olive Garden again because it is just such good value. We wish they had something similar at home. Tomorrow we are back on the road and starting our trip across the great plains to South Dakota.

Photo of the day: the strange glass in the sculpture garden. We are standing on opposite sides here!