MINNEAPOLIS — Bob Wilson stepped off a bus at St. Paul's Lambert's Landing on Saturday, a native back in his hometown for the maiden voyage of the Viking Mississippi, a 450-foot-long cruise ship and floating symbol of this city's hopes for a riverfront tourism revival.
Sunshine glittered off the Mississippi River as minnows swam below and seagulls squawked overhead. Wilson and dozens of others, fellow passengers and bystanders both, leaned against a handrail as they squinted up at the ship that prepared to carry up to 386 people downriver to St. Louis.
"We had vacation trips like this delayed, deferred, a year and a half to two years because of the pandemic," said Wilson, 68, who lives in San Diego and said he hadn't returned to the city where he grew up for more than a decade. "But this has been a great experience to come back to this area."
