WARMLY CELEBRATING
Minneapolis will show L.A. visitors what a real winter is like, but there’s fun aplenty too
Even if it’s bitterly cold, bundle up and head to the Twin Cities, hosting the Super Bowl this weekend. Winter is the coolest time to go, don’t you know: Marvel at frozen Minnehaha Falls, visit world-class museums in Minneapolis and admire the Ice Palace, pictured, at Winter Carnival in St. Paul.
MINNEAPOLIS — I’m writing this just before New Year’s, and the morning sky is cloudless blue crystal, the fresh snow-white snow is sparkling like, well, snow, and it’s beautiful outside. It really is. It’s also 13 degrees below zero. I swore I wouldn’t write the old “guess what — it’s cold in Minnesota” story. I mean, doesn’t everybody know that? Surely, they’ve at least heard the rumors.
I just brought in my shivering dogs from a one-block forced march, and the only thing I have to say to Super Bowl visitors from the Golden State is what we’ve been telling outsiders since before statehood 160 years ago: I hope you have warm clothes. Here is where any decent Minnesota-in-winter story lays out all the state’s wonderful attractions: world-class museums, an acclaimed symphony orchestra, a great university, lots of good live theater, trendy restaurants, Lake Superior, the Mall of America.
All good, but note that with one exception, everything on that list is indoors. And none of it changes the fact that it’s still 13 below zero.
Sustained low temps are good news. Downtown St. Paul’s 70-foottall Ice Palace will stay frozen, and so will the ice sculptures on Minneapolis’ Lake of the Isles.
At least 100,000 guests are in town this weekend. Demand for rooms was so high that locals moved in with friends and relatives so they could rent their homes. Gridlock threatened.
The Super Bowl isn’t the only thing making the Twin Cities more crowded and complicated. The big game falls in the middle of St. Paul’s 17-day Winter Carnival, an annual celebration since 1886 with its own traditions, throngs of revelers and the Ice Palace.
The Super Bowl’s centerpiece, of course, is the shining 18-month-old U.S. Bank Stadium, set like a giant nonmelting ice crystal on the edge of downtown Minneapolis. It blends so well with the sky that birds keep trying to fly through it.
But the whole city has been primping ever since the NFL’s choice for the game was announced in May 2014, and it shows.