Sunday, June 18, 2023
Rachel is 45
Jon is 44
Seriously. Day 4.1 Anyway, we decided breakfast had been so good, we should have breakfast again. This time, I decided to torture myself and walk to Rachel's for exercise. Just walking there wasn't enough, so I decided to take the "scenic route", and take the steps down to the path by the river, which turned out to lead to a god-awful hill right back up the hill that the steps had taken me down.
I arrived - as usual - a sweaty mess, and cooled and calmed myself down by harassing Rachel's cat Diana. Then we drove over to the West 7th area to get some brunch at the Parlour Bar. It was fine, but a little loud and not nearly as good as the Hope Breakfast that we had had the morning before.
We then wandered down to the Claddagh Cafe to work some, but mostly ended up just talking a lot, which is kind of our MO. After that, we ended up changing our mind about having the car in town, drove it back to her place, and then walked back over to the hotel, where she tutored while I went looking for a place to hang out.
I walked out of that hotel room feeling really optimistic about all of the cool places to check out in St. Paul while Rachel tutored. However, I forgot one important fact: It was Sunday in St. Paul and just about nothing was open. Luckily, I'm exceptionally skilled at finding the exception to the rule, and I went to the Lobby Bar in the St Paul Hotel, which was not only open, but also serving Manhattans.
After I had already gotten one strong Manhattan deep, Rachel met me there, and after one drink for her (two for me), we were pretty toasted. So of course we quickly made dinner plans and wandered down to Patrick McGovern's pub. That was a fun and friendly experience: our server was welcoming and friendly. However, he was also perhaps a little overly optimistic about just how crowded that place was going to be that evening… Literally nobody walked in after us until we left. In fact, we even laughed a little to each other about how one group of people tried to leave through a locked door and had to ask how they could get out.
Feeling satiated and pleasantly tipsy, we made our way back to the hotel and figured "hey, we have no idea what we're doing, why not watch Deadpool?". So we watched Deadpool.