Beauty of Rochester salves those who visit Mayo Clinic

By: Billie Ann Albert

Last week I made another trip up to Rochester, Minn., for another doctor’s appointments with my parents and junior Gabby Plunkett. I decided to take some pictures for class, and I tried to get some pictures of other buildings around town, but there weren’t very many interesting ones, so I mainly got some inside and outside of Mayo Clinic.

It is huge and very beautiful inside. There are even a couple shopping and candy stores. At one of the main entrances, there is a beautiful piano almost always being played with people surrounding it. Before you get to the piano, though, from the parking ramp elevators, there are pictures all along the two curved walls with historical facts. There are 19 floors plus a subway level and, lucky for me, my nephrologist is on the top floor, so I got to go all the way up there for this last visit. There is a part of the hallway that is all glass windows with tables and chairs so that you can look out and see the city.

St. Mary’s Hospital is just down the street from Mayo Clinic, and I did not go in, but I did get a couple pictures of the outside. It is very pretty on the outside, although nothing special on the inside.

Between the hospital and clinic is the Ronald McDonald House. The Ronald McDonald House is basically a hotel for people who cannot afford a regular one. At every McDonald’s there is a place to donate money to these houses around the world. They are pretty neat because there are kitchens on each floor where you can store your food as well as numerous stoves and even a pantry filled with food. There is a game room and a freezer filled with free ice cream.

There is much more to this city than I have showed, but we did not explore much this time. They have many similar stores to the ones here in Cedar Falls and Waterloo, but many more restaurants including Denny’s, China Star, Kingdom Buffet, etc. The Apache mall is a lot bigger than College Square mall and there are so many more stores.