We stopped somewhere along the way to eat at a Cracker Barrel. Andre said that this was a staple for him when he and the guys drove down to Florida, so we tried it out. I loved it. It was all home cookin'. I ordered the Chicken fried Chicken. It sounded pretty American and I was all for American experiences. It was just a piece of breaded, fried chicken breast. A huge piece at that. I had it with green beans, carrots and mashed potatoes. There was a white chicken gravy on top. It was also served with a corn muffin and a buttermilk biscuit. I really want to make it sometime. It's not that it was really all that good. The chicken was a bit tough, the veggies were canned and overcooked, but it tasted like a grandma from the south would make. They also had a little gift store attached to the restaurant, an "old country store". Well, food and gift shops are my two favourite things, so I was in heaven. Andre ordered the catfish skewers. He said they were very good.
As we drove into Minneapolis, we were assaulted by a huge thunderstorm. It started out with seeing a lovely rainbow at the side of the road. And then black clouds, and a ridiculous amount of lightening. The sky was sparkling like a Christmas tree. It was very hard to see through the rain, but Andre was a trooper and did very well.
We finally arrived at our hotel, another surprise hotwire purchase. This one was a Sheraton. Again, we got a room with 2 beds, but oh well. Our room was actually very interesting. It was what they called a "Cabana" and it was on the 2nd floor, overlooking the pool area... and as a result, there was no window to the outside world. The room was very, very humid and smelled strongly of chlorine. Andre put a towel underneath the door that lead to the balcony so that the smell wouldn't be so bad. We could have lived with that, but there's more horrible things about this hotel... I thought maybe I'd like to make a phone call using my calling card. I looked at the phone to figure out how to dial out, and it said it would charge me $2, plus $0.10 per minute for the privilege of using their phone (to dial a toll free number). Local calls were $1.50. That made me mad. But it didn't end there... I decided to load up the internet to post a blog posting... it wanted me to give a credit card to log into the internet and informed me that it would charge me $5 per hour of internet usage. Rediculous. At one point on our trip, I really really wanted to order room service, just for fun. But the continental breakfast cost $19 per person.... I think not. Does a muffin and a bowl of fruit really need to cost that much? Oh, and the bottle of water in our room cost $4. I had half a mind to drink the water, and then fill it up with tap water and put it back... just out of spite.
So we decided to get out of there. The chlorine smell was bad, and there was a TGI Friday's in front, so we went there for a late night snack. We ordered an appetizer platter. Andre ordered a beer and actually got carded. This is very weird, because at this point, his vacation beard was huuuge. But, I guess his baby face is visible, even under all of that fur.
We headed back to the hotel and went to bed. The chlorine smell had dissipated a bit after Andre blocked the door. But, since the pool was still open, it was still very, very, loud with kids screaming and splashing. The pool was supposed to close at 11, but there were still people in there at 11:30.
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