Really! When I flew home from Europe on Icelandair last summer, I sat next to an Icelandic couple who made an annual shopping trip to the Mall of America to buy their children's school clothes, having figured that the cost savings on the clothes made up for the cost of the airfare.

However, unless you come from one of the rare North American cities that has no shopping malls, the Mall of America is just an overgrown, poorly lit mall with the same stores, food court tenants, and theaters showing mindless movies as any other mall.