Under a Giant Toadstool

Monday, Day 6

Our last day in Minneapolis found me eating a sandwich in the shade of a giant mushroom.
Next to a fog machine.
With fish swimming in the background.

This all took place, if you happened to be wondering, at the Rainforest Café in the Mall of America. Having heard of the café through friends, we walked in through the gift shop (yes, it has one), ducked past an animatronic boa constrictor, walked under a tunnel-type doorway that was actually an aquarium and finally sat down beside a steaming water feature.

 

Looking around, you see several other aquariums and artificial trees rising to meet a vine-obscured ceiling, giant statue parrots hung throughout it. Over here a motorized butterfly flaps its larger-than-life wings, and over there a troupe of animatronic gorillas flap their mechanical arms. Eerie. Suddenly white lights start flashing, and the sound of canned thunder drowns out the din of the busy dining room. Yeah, it was an experience!

(That morbidly fascinating picture to the left is the result of the four of us crowding into the same photo booth at the mall. I just want to say: my head isn't really that big.)

But that's not all. After we finished eating, the parents among us thought it would be funny to send us youngsters on the highest roller coaster in the mall. It's a vertical incline roller coaster, meaning it goes straight up before peaking and plummeting straight down.

It was actually pretty fun.