The Kitty Cat Klub is not a brothel, promise

And the polka club is actually a cool place to hang.

Mike, Sara and I had a lovely evening wandering around Madison, Wisconsin two nights ago. I saw the capitol building which was lovely, and we watched the sun set over Lake Mendota (or maybe it was Menota - having two lakes with practically the same name in one city was a bad choice).

The next morning, I left rather early to avoid fines or a car towing  (hence the lack of blog post), and was on my way to either St. Paul or Minneapolis (I didn't actually have a place to stay until I was about an hour away). While driving through Wisconsin, I kept seeing signs for a town called Menomonie, which didn't seem like a terribly exciting place, but every time I drove past a sign for it, I couldn't help but be reminded of this scene from Finding Nemo: 

Just before I exited Wisconsin, I realized I hadn't had any cheese! Lucky for me, I saw a roadside attraction sign guiding me 3 miles off the highway to an organic dairy farm where I tasted, then bought myself entirely too much cheese. 

While I was at Cady Cheese, an awesome dude, Dusty dropped me an email and invited me to stay at his place.  Dusty is currently working on his PhD in Integrative Biology and Physiology (mouthful, I know). The coolest part of his PhD is that he is currently working in a lab that is growing human organs, from scratch - and they're working! After a tour of his house, we headed out to some of his favorite spots in Minneapolis.

The first spot was right over the Mississippi River (this was my first time seeing it!). I instantly fell in love with the place when I saw a mug of legos on every table. Once again, I watched the sun set, this time over the Mississippi, and couldn't help but admire the stunning nighttime skyline of Minneapolis.

We then worked our way around the city, checking out different night spots that usually have music happening. Unfortunately, the Polka Lounge didn't have any live music, but Dusty swears its an awesome spot where a lot of people (young and old) go and dance Polka all night. There's also a live pianist at the Polka club, and on Karaoke night, you make a request, and he'll play while you sing (gotta have those lyrics memorized though! No cheating!) After checking out the Polka lounge, he brought me to Messa Pizza. I wasn't terribly hungry, but Dusty got some awesome looking food. The cool thing about Messa Pizza were the toppings - they really took pizza to a whole new level of inovation.

 We then found ourselves at the Kitty Cat Klub which I promise, is not a brothel. It's actually a neat little place with tons of comfy sofas, and some crazy wall hangings that kind of reminded me of Alice in Wonderland. We caught some live music there, but it was a definite miss. If Weird Science was a genre, the band that played would be the definition of it. 

I still haven't quite figured out where I'm off to today. I'm still debating between North and South Dakota anyone have any thoughts on the matter? South Dakota has more to see, North Dakota has places for me to sleep.... vote away in the comments!