One weekend to socialize

We had two invitations for lunch and dinner on Saturday and Sunday plus a faulty car condition that tied us back home over this weekend. We decided that since this was the case, we should at least go to a new shop to purchase our weekly stuff. On Friday evening, we were driving around trying to find a good mechanic to fix our car and we saw a road that would take us to Silver Lake village in city of St. Anthony- a sister city of Salo, Finland.
The concept of Sister Cities is much prevalent here in US where towns or cities from geographically and politically distinct areas are paired, with the goal of fostering human contact and cultural links. Check out this link to find out about other such sister cities. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_twin_towns_and_sister_cities
I have not seen Salo and so cannot comment on the similarities but St.Anthony is a very beautifully laid out city, almost like a small village.We walked down the street admiring the pretty shopping complex and fountains there and watched the sunset before heading back home.
After a filling lunch at a friend’s place on Sunday, we were off in search of a mechanic to get our car repaired.
Soon after we came back from Chicago, we found that our car had developed 4 unrelated problems- dome light was not working, wiper not working in intermittent speed, car radio antenna not going up and cigarette lighter not working!! We were just amused that 4 such unrelated things could go off the same day like that.
First we went to Bob and Steve’s where it was anywhere between $50-100 to just open the car and check. Then we went to a smaller mechanic who said he had to check up all the wires and connections and it can be fixed in an hour or it can take weeks to figure out the problem, all at $100 an hour.
After getting these two bombshell quotes, we were at our wits end and on Sunday evening we went to Tires Plus to just try one more time before we actually spent the money. Now, here there was a mechanic/electrician, who immediately came out, checked the car for us and within a minute it was confirmed that one of the fuses that had blown and we just had to replace that one piece which cost us less than a dollar and all our 4 problems solved. Shame on the other guys!
It was late Sunday evening when we drove along the Mississippi river stopping every once in a while to look at the changing leaf colors. The temperature has also come down drastically and the maximum it gets is 13 C. We are still enjoying the summer or what is left of it now before winter sets it and we are all wrapped up in layers of sweaters.