Adventure at the Minneapolis Airport

Right now we are in the Minneapolis/St.Paul International Airport! Our flight to St. Louis was insanely short and smooth, nothing much there, and the flight to Minneapolis was a little bumpier but really not too bad. We've already had quite an adventure here and we still have 6 hours until our flight to Iceland. Also, before I start this little story, I just want to say that I realize how lucky I am to be going on this trip, even though I may not sound like it after this story :) Hopefully by reading this you will never do the same thing we did!

We had decided that once we got to Minneapolis we would get something to eat as one of the first things, but we had to get our bags and take care of them first. So we went to the baggage claim and the Iceland Air ticketing counter was right there! We were glad- not too far to take the bags. At closer inspection, though, we realized no one was manning the counters. We asked a TSA security guy if we could check our bags in anywhere because our flight wasn't until 7:30. He told us that the Iceland Air counters didn't open until 3. Great. So then we asked him where we could go to a restaurant- he replied that the main terminal was where most of the food was and we should head over there, using the light rail system. We decided to go.


Following the signs to the terminal and the light rail, we started walking. And kept walking. And walking. And walking. Through a parking garage. We walked probably a half mile to get to the light rail. We rode that, then followed the signs up to another tram. We rode that, then walked around a while more trying to find the main concourse. Eventually we ended up in a place with an information desk and asked the lady where we could find a food court. She kindly told us that there weren't any restaurants except Houlihans that we could get to without going through security. My mom explored a little more to make sure it was true, and it was. 

By then we were pretty hungry but we decided it would be better to get travel store food back at our terminal instead of getting it in this one because it was the same thing. If we went back we could get settled to wait for the Iceland Air counter to open. So we turned around and went right back to where we started, lugging almost 200 pounds of baggage (see picture). I timed it and it took about 25 minutes to get back to the terminal. Kinda ridiculous I think. Oh well, at least we burned off the calories we gained by eating travel store junk food :D 

I would definitely recommend to anyone who comes here to not do what we just did. It wasn't exactly pleasant. And again, all of this is totally worth it, I just thought I would share the story because it makes quite a great one, don't you think?

 
Now we're sitting in front of the ticket counters, and Wi-Fi is paid for for today ($7.95, pretty good price for 24 hours), and we'll probably just hang here until 3 when we can check the bags in and go back through security.