Excelsior/Mound (With Pictures!)

Hello all,

Last weekend was busy. Lauren and I headed over to her friend's house to do a little two hour babysitting. The couple wanted to get out of the house and have dinner, so we took care of their one-year-old daughter. It was fun, and I learned a few things. For one, babies always want to play. I thought they like to play a little bit, and then just lay around. Apparently that's not true. I enjoyed it though. After that, we just headed back to Lauren's and played Mario Cart Wii until she fell asleep. Exciting, I know.

On Saturday we headed over to downtown Excelsior located on Water Street.

We started off at my favorite store of the bunch: Leipolds. Now I know Leipolds looks like a run down shack. I know it kind of has a funny smell. However, its charm and array of interesting items is not surpassed, in my opinion, by any store.

This place is full of Scandanavian, Lake Minnetonka and Americana trinkets. As an avid flag collector, the $2 four by six inch flags can't be beat. I actually bought my grandma a vintage South Tigers flag there last summer. When you look at the pictures you might be thinking, "Well dat der lookie like a buncha junk", but I can assure you that the place, while lacking organizational structure, is loaded with cool stuff. If you're proud of your Scandinavian heritage, looking for a unique Lake Minnetonka gift, or are looking for anything Minnesotan, then Leipolds is the place for you.

After taking in the sights and smells of Leipolds, we headed down the street to Capers. Capers is a store full of things that chicks would think are fun, and Lauren really enjoys going in there. It has some cool stuff like bands that fit around beer bottles with fun sayings and funny books. Besides that, it's mostly shot glasses with sassy chick sayings and modern goofball picture frames. Surprisingly, we passed the candy shop, and went straight on to Lauren's nightmare: Heritage II. If you think authentic wool Irish clothing is cool then you'll love Heritage II. If you don't, then this place will be more boring than watching wool grow. The lady working there sounded like she was from Dublin, so this place is the go to spot for an authentic Irish shopping experience. Not surprisingly, our stop at Heritage II was short. We moved along to Excelsior Bay Books. We browsed through a few books, but didn't spend very much time here either.

Before heading home to Tonka Bay, we decided to make a quick drive to Mound. We didn't really know what we were looking for, but we settled on John's Variety & Pets. I should of known we were in for trouble when we had to cross the small wooden bridge from the parking area over the marsh to JV&P, and then walked past the "half off" metal shelving in the grass/rubble around the store. The variety part of the name makes sense. This place has so much stuff to peruse through. If you need a Minnesota Twins pinata, a pair of underware or a hula hoop, then you'll be satisfied with John's Variety and Pets. However, as much as the variety tag fits the store, I'm not really sure if the pets moniker works with this joint. The "pets" section is located in the back. As we made out way to the back be passed a dog scarf (I think it was a dog scarf) with a tag on it that held the spitting image of Super Joe. This was my last good memory of JV&P. The first thing we saw when we got to the back were, *shudders*, fish tanks full of cockroaches and other bugs crawling on rolls of toliet paper with yellow light bulbs shinning down on them. I shouldn't even be posting this because I'm sure I'm going to have nightmares. Needless to say we bolted for the door.

We rounded up the night with a few games of Smart Ass (a trivia style game) and dinner at The Narrows with Lauren's parents. The game was fun, Lauren won twice, and dinner was delicous. I had the best club sandwich I've ever had. Sidenote: I think it's weird when a bar playing music has a TV on CNBC. It just doesn't make sense.

I hope you enjoyed reading the section on JV&P because I can't stop scratching the back of my head. One last quick note, there is a cool dumpy restraunt/bar called Haskell's in Excelsior. We didn't go there this time, but I'm sure we'll hit it up sometime this summer. Look for a post on that in the future. That's all for now.

Eric