Hubby had to go to a seminar and I got to tag along! Come antique shopping with me in Minneapolis, Minnesota!
I have never gotten to tag along with hubby for work, so this was a new experience for us! I had also never had the chance to go antique shopping and thrifting in Minneapolis! So I knew this was going to be a great trip!
I reached out to a couple Minnesota Instagram friends to see if it would work out to meet up one of the days I was there. Guess what! One of them could! So on the second full day I was there I got to spend it with Minnesota native Lora Bloomquist of Create & Ponder. Lora and I have collaborated on social media before and she was a guest speaker in my coaching group. Blogging is Lora’s specialty, so she talked to my group all about blogging!
Other than connecting with Lora for one of the days, I had not done any planning! Hubby and I laughed about this and Lora and I talked about it too! What did we do before smart phones!! Finding antique shops and mapping my route would have been much, much harder years ago. Depending on the time period I may have had to rely on a local phone book! Otherwise I might have searched the Internet and then had to print off addresses and plan out my route on an old school map!
While technology can be frustrating sometimes, in this case it made my life so much easier!!
So with no planning I shopped a ton of antique shops, thrift stores and salvage yards! I simply went to Google Maps the morning of my free day and searched antique shops near me! As they pulled up, I looked at their photos, websites, hours and location. Turns out not a lot of shops are actually open on Monday’s. And a lot of them don’t open until 11 or noon.
In my mind I was expecting 9 or 10 to be the open time, so shops that opened early got first priority from me! I didn’t want to sit in the hotel room all morning! As I was mapping out what places to shop I looked at my list from Lora. She had sent me the places she wanted to go so that I didn’t repeat any of the shops. As I mapped my route and found places that weren’t open Mondays, but were on Wednesday, I made a “list” or folder for those shops right in Google Maps.
This actually came in handy as my route for Monday changed a bit and I could add or delete each days list of shops as needed! Have you used this feature? Let me know in the comments.
In less than an hour I had a tentative game plan for antique shopping in Minneapolis over the next three days.
On the way to Minneapolis
I wanted to stop at a few places on the way, but there really wasn’t much to stop at. I did find this antique shop, which is mainly a Foto Park as stated on the website. So while the antiques weren’t calling my name, the rest of the junk was!! This is a TINY selection of all of the awesomness here! The artist is SO creative!
Get A Tour of Hot Sam’s
Day 1 Antiquing In Minneapolis
St. Vincent de Paul – 461 7th St W, St Paul, MN 55102
Goodwill
Old Stuff
Practical Goods
Turnstyle Consignment
NW Architectural Salvage
Time Bomb Vintage
E’s Emporium (FAVORITE)
Turquoise Vintage
St. Vincent de Paul – 2939 12th Ave S, Minneapolis, MN 55407
Salvation Army
Day 2 Antiquing with Lora
Bauer Brothers Salvage
Habitat for Humanity Restore
Hunt & Gather (FAVORITE)
Loft – Watch my haul video below. The tragedy happened at this shop which really left a bad taste in my mouth!
Day 3 Antique Shopping in Minneapolis
Salvation Army
Salvation Army
Habitat for Humanity Restore
Mall of St. Paul
Hopkins Antique Mall
Antiques on Main Street
Pink Elephant
Go Antiquing With Me
See What I Brought Home With Me
Food
Hubby was able to get food on himself at almost every meal we had together!! Here’s where we ate… Crooked Pint Ale House. Devils Advocate. The Local. Wild Boar Bar and Grill. For the most part all restaurants were within walking distance of our hotel. On the last day after the conference we ate in Hopkins at the Wild Boar because Hopkins had a whole strip of antique shops!
Lora took me to one of her favorite spots! Que Viet. It was delicious. I don’t remember what it was called, but kind of like egg rolls on top of noodles!
For the most part I just snacked and/or ate Jimmy John’s when I was by myself! I wanted to make the most of my thrifting and antiquing! Food was not a priority! Plus I knew that at dinner I would eat a days worth of calories!!!
Would I Go Back?
In a heartbeat I would go back to Minneapolis and spend a few days. There are SO many places to shop for antiques and I didn’t even hit up half of them! I’ve also had a lot of people ask about safety downtown. I never felt uncomfortable. Matt and I walked around in the evenings. There were concerts, baseball games, Gay Pride event, for the most part some areas with lots of people milling about and others were very vacant. I walked around during the day by myself. The only time I was a little surprised was seeing armed guards at a gas station I went to, but I’m a country girl!
The hotel we stayed at was paid for, but the chair at the hotel was GROSS! Not as bad as THIS nightmare hotel, but still gross. We also had an adjoining room and there were a ton of ladies in there talking and laughing ALL NIGHT! I wanted to physically hurt them because I couldn’t sleep, but I just suffered through it. So I would not stay at the HIlton again!!
More Photos
