It is raining. You had a whole plan involving the lakes and the Stone Arch Bridge and a patio, and now you are standing in a hotel lobby watching it come down sideways. Good news: Minneapolis is a city that was designed by people who knew the weather would not cooperate. There is more to do indoors here than almost anywhere its size.
Here is the honest, locally-sourced list — what actually holds up for a whole afternoon, not just a place to stand until it stops.
1. The museums, which are genuinely world-class
Start with the Minneapolis Institute of Art, because general admission is free and the collection spans about five thousand years. You can spend forty minutes or four hours there and feel equally well served. It is the single best rainy-day value in the city.
The Walker Art Center is the contemporary counterweight — bigger, stranger, and with a very good restaurant if you want to make an afternoon of it. And the Mill City Museum is built inside the ruins of what was once the largest flour mill in the world, which means the building is the exhibit. If you only understand one thing about why Minneapolis exists, make it that one.
We keep a running shortlist of the rest on our best Minneapolis museums page.
2. The skyway system, which is a genuinely strange delight
Downtown Minneapolis is threaded with an enclosed second-floor walkway network connecting dozens of blocks — offices, hotels, food courts, shops, the whole downtown core — so that you can cross a substantial chunk of the city without going outside. On a wet Tuesday it is the most practical thing in town. On a wet Saturday it is quieter and slightly eerie, which is its own kind of fun.
It is not comprehensive and it is not always obvious how to get in, so check hours before you rely on it, and use the Metro Transit trip planner for anything beyond walking distance.
3. Go inside a mansion
This is the one visitors never think of and always love. Minneapolis has a run of surviving Gilded Age houses, and a couple of them you can actually walk through rather than photograph from the sidewalk.
Our Gilded Age Mansion Tour goes inside two of them: the Charles S. Pillsbury Mansion, a genuine English manor with panelled rooms and a staircase shipped over from England and reassembled here, and 300 Clifton, the Eugene J. Carpenter Mansion in Loring Park. It is entirely indoors once you are in the door, it takes a rainy afternoon apart very nicely, and you learn where the money came from.
More of the buildings worth seeking out are on our best Minneapolis landmarks list.
4. Get on a trolley (yes, in the rain)
Slightly self-interested, but hear us out: a Minneapolis Trolley Tours trolley is enclosed and heated. Rain is the one weather condition that makes a narrated sightseeing tour better, because you get the whole city through a window with somebody explaining it, and you never once get wet.
If you would rather have the vehicle to yourselves, private rentals are available, and the Candlelight Ghost Tour is arguably improved by bad weather. Come winter, the Holiday Light Ride runs the same principle with lights.
5. Coffee, then something stronger
Minneapolis takes coffee seriously — there are roasters here that would hold their own in Portland or Melbourne, and most of them have room to sit for two hours with a book. Our best coffee shops in Minneapolis page is the shortcut.
When the afternoon turns into evening, the city’s speakeasy-style bars are exactly the right room for weather like this — low light, no windows to speak of, and nowhere to be. Start with our best speakeasies in Minneapolis list. The Pillsbury Club has a bar inside the mansion itself, which is about as good as this gets on a wet night.
6. If you have kids
Rain plus children is a different problem and needs a different answer: somewhere they can make noise. Mia is more child-tolerant than people expect, Mill City Museum has a genuinely fun elevator ride through the mill ruins, and our best Minneapolis family activities page has the rest of the indoor options in one place.
Where to stay when the forecast is bad
A rainy trip is much better from somewhere you do not mind being stuck in. 300 Clifton is a historic mansion bed and breakfast in Loring Park with a four-season hot tub in the garden and a speakeasy-style video lounge downstairs — a building that rewards a day indoors. If you are here for longer than a weekend, Oakland’s on 9th does furnished studios by the week or month in a restored 1889 brownstone downtown, a block from the skyway.
Keep reading: the best free things to do in Minneapolis.
Book something dry
Rain is not a reason to write off a day here. Check the trolley schedule, pick a mansion, and let the weather do what it likes.
Keep reading: What Are the Best Things to Do in Minneapolis With Kids?