This is just a short report for anyone thinking about going to the Mall of America.

It was an all girl long weekend. There were 4 of us and we left Thursday afternoon from Philly and got back late Sunday night. We took a nonstop Northwest Airline and the flight was fine.

We stayed at the Airport Hilton which was a short 3 min free shuttle to the Mall and 5 mins to the airport. The shuttles were nice and clean and did I mention free The shuttle to the Mall was once every hour on the 20 min mark and the shuttle to the airport was once every 1/2 hour. The hotel was very very nice and the staff was extremely friendly and helpful.

We shopped: Fri 10:30 am - 8:00 pm
Sat 10:30 am - 7:00 pm
Sun 10:30 am - 1:30 pm

We had every intention of staying together which we did on Friday but by Saturday we realized that we could never get everything we wanted to do done unless we split up which we did Sat & Sun.

The mall has every store imaginable plus more. It has a Lindt chocolate store (the best chocolate in the WHOLE world IMO better than Godiva) which I spent time in. I found the prices in the mall the same as at home but there were alot of sales going on. There was even an Urban Outfitters (which I wrongfully thought that Philly had the one and only store).

We shopped alot and bought alot. We were only there for three days but we all brought our biggest piece of luggage so we could fit all of our purchases in.

I have to say the people who worked in the mall were the friendiest I have ever experienced in a mall or department store. I am used to NJ malls and beleive me if you can get anyone to help/pay attention to you while shopping you feel like you hit the lottery. Most of these "kids" are either talking back and forth to each other about their rotten dates the night before or speaking a foreign language to each other so you don't know what they are saying.

On the first night we ate at Tucci Benucch. It's an Italian restaurant and the food was excellent!! The second night we ate at the Twin City Grill which was just as good as the first night's meal. Both are located in the mall. We were all please with our meals and their prices. My sister and I are both vegetarians but were able to find many choices at these two places.

Our lunches were in the food court which I have to say I was impressed. I had a salad at a mexican CS which was very fresh and a crepe from the Magic Wok on the next day that was very tasty.

I had planned on doing the amusment park but just didn't have the time. I did walk thur it and thought the rides looked great. I did think the whole place would be bigger but maybe it just appeared to be small since it was inside of a very very big building.

I was dissappointed in the lego store. It's billed as a three story lego store. When I got inside I couldn't find the stairs to go up to the second floor. When I ask how to get upstairs I was told that the "creations" were 3 stories high not the floor space. The store in my estimates was about 1/2 of the "floor space" of the DTD store.

One thing to mention the Mall does not open until 10:00 during the week and 11:00 on Sunday.

Our trip was alot of fun and I'm glad we got to do it. My only regret was that we didn't have time to leave the Mall area and see some of the city.