Twin Cities, Day Two

On my second day in the Twin Cities, I crossed the river into Saint Paul, the city A Prairie Home Companion called home for so many years. After a day of glass towers in Minneapolis, Saint Paul felt older and quieter, a little more stately.

Two domes dominate the city. The State Capitol sits in white marble at the top of a long mall, and its rotunda glows in blue and gold. Just across the way, the Cathedral of Saint Paul looks down from its hill, and inside, the organ, the stained glass, and the carved stone make it hard to know where to look first. Outside, under heavy gray skies, someone had left a single knitted mitten on an iron fence, waiting for its owner to come back.

Minneapolis felt like the city that does the work. Saint Paul felt like the city that keeps the stories, which is exactly where I expected Garrison Keillor’s voice to come from.