It's like hometown show-and-tell!
The Mississippi actually bisects Minneapolis and then curves along through Saint Paul, so it splits both cities. Minneapolis started as a flour milling town and the mills were powered by the river. The description Artemis gave is really good. Downtown Minneapolis is younger and hipper and downtown Saint Paul has a more historic feel, between a Cathedral on the hill and the state capitol at the base of the hill. They share an east-west border and are surrounded by several rings of suburbs that makes it, geographically speaking, a large metropolitan area.
Minneapolis skyline:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f6/Minneapolis-skyline-20070508.jpg Saint Paul:
http://www.hansenaudit.com/images/skyline_st_paul-07.jpg Saint Paul winter carnival:
http://bit.ly/d86hJy (They don't build the ice castle every year - they are way too expensive.)
Another note on twins: the University of Minnesota (with campuses in both Minneapolis and Saint Paul) is a leader in twins research, both identical and fraternal. Their studies of identical twins raised apart is particularly fascinating. Here's a little bit about it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Twin_Family_Study Who's next with the hometown? Melbourne, Minneapolis, do we have another M?
