11-12.02 Minnesota: Virginia and Ely

The SPA treatment on Tuesday was wonderful! First they scrubbed my back, arms and legs with salt+wild rice+spices scrub. This made my skin hot hot, just like your mouth feels after eating a hot pepper :) After the scrub I got to take a bath and then a 40 minutes massage followed! It was great!

Yesterday (Wednesday) I just stayed at the house. It snowed the whole afternoon, I went for a walk and just relaxed - watched movies and read my book. I'm getting all rested and ready for Hawaii. Last night we were invited over to Ryan's parents place for cake - it was his dad's birthday on Monday. Afterwards we stayed up quite late chatting with Nikki, talking about home decoration and dishes and travel and dreams and relatives and kids and education and world economy and China and all kinds of things :) I miss having her in my life and it is so extremely good to see her again after 1,5 years.

Today, on Thursday, Nikki had to go to Ely for work tasks so she picked me up from the house and we drove up together. It is about 1 hour drive, very nice drive I must admit. It has been snowing for the past 24 hours so all the trees are covered with thick layer of snow - another winter wonderland. We had lunch at a lodge overseeing a lake, food was very good and place was like on a postcard. After lunch Nikki went to work at the city hall and I got to wonder around the town. It is just a small town with one major street. I was here last time when visiting as well so many places were familiar. Luckily there is a caffee with free wireless so I get to read through my e-mail, update my blog and upload some photos.

Life is slow here, even the snow is falling down slowly :) And this brings a sense of peace, life is good :)
Tomorrow early morning, at 7am, I will take a flight from Duluth to Minneapolis. From there to Honolulu and then late at night last flight to Kahului. I will meet Wytni and her family at the airport. Hopefully I'll be able to come online the day after, on the 14th. All the best to all of you!

9-10.02 Minnesota: Virginia

Monday was a day at home. Slept in, ate, watched 2 movies, read the book, ate some more :) That is what I call a vacation. As Nikki and Ryan had their honeymoon in Hawaii, same island where I'm going to, we went though the pics and travel notes they made. There were there in February as well, it all looked so nice and inviting.

Today, on Tuesday, Nikki left me her car and I navigated to town before noon, following the given instructions as close as possible. Yesterday the city of Duluth was closed and lots of schools in the area as well since an ice storm was suppose to hit. Temperature is close to freezing and it is raining, so once it hits the ground it forms into ice very quickly - this makes the roads very slippery and the cities are closed. Today the situation is pretty much the same, in the afternoon it is suppose to get colder, making the situation even worse. Here the cars don't have winter tires or anything, so in a way it makes sense to just keep the people off the roads.

There were 2 reasons why I came to town though:
First - Nikki and her family made a local SPA gift card as a birthday present for me :) Place is called The Pebble SPA Company. I tried to pick something that is not available elsewhere. So I will get a wild rice and spice treatment today at 3:30 in the afternoon. As wild rice is a Minnesotan thing I'm guessing that there is no wild rice treatments elsewhere. It is a body treatment that increases circulation, eases muscle pain, relieves tension and warms the body. Treatment is completed with a tub soak and an ultra moisturizing massage - all together it is a full hour of indulging! I'll let you know later on of how it turned out to be.
Second- I wanted to be online for a bit - addicted to Internet as I am :) It is just so difficult with Internet elsewhere (outside Estonia), this is something that always gets me by surprise.

I also stopped by Nikkis workplace - city courthouse. Unfortunately she was quite busy during the day so I was not able to get a tour. Perhaps some other day. I'll go and get a nice homemade sub for lunch now, accompanied by raspberry italian cream soda :) Yumm, things are getting crossed of on my list one by one :)

7-8.02 Minnesota: St.Paul, Duluth and Virginia

Saturday evening turned out to be a blast. 2 hour nap in the afternoon saved me from the regular coma that comes after staying awake for 36 hours in a row. Some of Mare's friends gathered at the apartment in the afternoon - by the evening there was a nice crowd of 9 people. We ended up taking a bus and city train to downtown St.Paul. Lots of dancing followed. Luckily the bars and clubs close here at 2am, otherwise I think we would have been up till the morning and I would have had to head directly to the airport :-P Getting back was a challenge though. We tried to get a cab for about 30 minutes, it felt like ages, standing by the side of the road and trying find a ride back home. As the whole downtown had the exact same plan as us (to get a cab) the streets were filled with people and cars creating huge traffic jams. It seemed absolutely impossible to find anything at all. In the end we just walked up to one empty cab, opened the door, sat in and demanded a ride :) It worked :) Of course only 5 of us fit there and the other bunch ended up waiting another 20 minutes. Sadly enough the had the key so we still had to wait outside once at the apartment.

Thanks to the time difference I had no trouble getting up 9am the following morning. After a quick shower Mare drove me to the airport. Surprisingly enough the whole checkin and getting through security took me only 15 minutes, that gave me plenty of time to have breakfast - missing that would have not been good at all.

Plane ride to Duluth was only 35 minutes - like a flight from Tallinn to Helsinki :) Nikki was waiting for me at the gate with two of her adorable sons: Colten and Wyatt. Colten is 2 years and 4 months and Wyatt is 8 months old. The younger one had a runny nose and an awful cough so he was not the happiest unfortunately. Older boy was shy at first but that passed quickly. Drive to Virginia Minnesota was about an hour. We covered so many topics on the way back - catching up on every possible aspect we could think of :) So great to see Nikki again!

Sunday we spent at home, just chatting and playing with the kids. Ryan was working the whole day and joined us in the evening. Got Dominos in the evening - pepperoni with cheesybread and everything! Headed to bed early. My goal is to eliminate my sleep deprivation during my stay with Nikki. As Nikki and Ryan are both working and kids are at the daycare then I have all the time to relax and rest. I have 16 movies to watch and a thick book to read :)