Minneapolis, MN: Target Field - Minnesota Twins vs Baltimore Orioles, 7/7/15

Once we'd enjoyed our dinner at Pizza Luce, it was time to head over to the baseball game. The Twins happened to be running a Tuesday night ticket promotion for a ticket, hot dog, and drink for $15 (tickets started at $14 anyway), so we picked up tickets at the gate (for events, we normally scour sites like StubHub as well as the team's ticket office to see what kind of deals we can get; I like when it works out that we can get "real" paper, fancy tickets for our memorabilia books!). Even though we had eaten dinner already, the drink part of this deal makes it totally worth buying (fountain drinks, even water, at the stadium run $4+), since none of the vendors will give you a cup to fill with water for free. 

We have no real rooting interest in either the Twins or Orioles (we did go to several Orioles games when we lived in Maryland, and the "OH!" during the National Anthem is forever stamped in my brain), but we have an interest in collecting baseball stadiums. You can see the list of where Eric has been here. I've been to all of those, all with him besides the Dodgers (which is funny because we met in LA), except for Wrigley, Busch, Riverfront/Cinergy (since it's been gone a while), and Jacob's/Progressive. These are all the next-closest stadiums to us, of course, so we'll get to them eventually!

We had a perfect night for baseball. It was sunny and started out warm. Our seats were high up in the outfield, so I brought a hoodie and did need to put it on due to the wind. The guys weren't very cold though.

For games that we attend where our primary purpose is to watch some baseball and check out a new stadium, we tend to wander around a lot. (When we go to Reds games or I want to keep score, we pretty much stay put. I brought my scorebook but quickly abandoned it to socialize...and when I didn't know almost any players' names! Too hard.) Target Field has a giant Target dog on the side of a building.

We were hoping there would be a giant target painted somewhere in the outfield for home runs but didn't see anything. Seems like a missed opportunity!

I couldn't help but do a double take when we walked by this vendor. I am 100% sure we were in Minnesota, which is in the United States, which spells favorite without a u.

We found some various statues, but no piggy bank.

We noticed a couple a few rows down from us playing Twingo, like Bingo but with baseball scoring. Awesome.

The Twins have racing mascots. The only thing recognizable is the Target dog (which unfortunately did not win this race). The mascots' faces are kind of terrifying and you can see some better photos thanks to Google if you'd like.

The coolest thing at Target Field is this neon board where two players, Minnie (for Minneapolis) and Paul (for St Paul) shake hands across a river. When a Twins player hits a home run, their hands light up and go up and down. It also happens when the Twins win, like they did on this night, 8-3.

We had a great night of watching baseball and hanging out with Petro. I'm glad he was able to join us! Target Field is a nice stadium and if you're into baseball is worth going to see. (I will reiterate my warning from yesterday, though, about the surrounding area being filled with adult-themed entertainment businesses. Just so you know!)

We went from here to the best hotel deal of the trip. We used the Hotwire app and wound up getting a huge suite at a really nice Marriott about 15 minutes outside downtown Minneapolis...for one of the cheapest prices we paid all trip. It was a great way to continue a great start to the trip!