Ford Piquette Avenue Plant Museum

Here’s more from my visit with Lena. After the Michigan Central tour, we were going to tour the Fisher Building. We still had some time left until that tour, and Lena suggested we go to another museum—Ford Piquette Avenue Plant. The museum looked rather small, so we thought we would check out everything in forty minutes and then go to our Art Deco tour.

However, we spent there two and a half hours, and we easily could have spent more.

Here you can learn more about an amazing story of the first Ford Plant building and how it was saved. We didn’t know any of that when we entered the building. We were told that the tour would start in 20 minutes, and we decided to wait, and meanwhile to walk around.

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Michigan Central Restoration

Continuing from here. It is such an amazing, such an unbelievable, and such an American story! Between 1988 and 2018, the building was not only vandalized but also looted. When Ford Motors bought the building and started the restoration, they wanted to have as many pieces of the original station as possible, so they asked everybody who had taken something from the abandoned building to return these pieces, no questions asked. And people started to bring these things back! There is a whole exhibit on the station’s ground floor showing what was returned – it’s amazing! Not just small objects, but the pieces of staircases, parts of light fixtures, and even the big clock!

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Michigan Central

This weekend, I am visiting Lena in Ann Arbor. As usual, I took a Wolverine train after work, and as usual, it was delayed, but not very bad – just over 20 minutes.

As usual, Lena planned a weekend full of activities, and today, we went to Detroit. Both attractions we visited were jaw-dropping, so I will try to write down everything I remember before the information spills away from my brain.

First, we went to the Michigan Central. This grand train station was opened in December 1913, marking a new era in the history of Detroit. We know what happened seventy-five years later: the cars and air travel diminished the role of the railroads in the USA, and little by little, the Michigan Central started to deteriorate, along with the whole city of Detroit.

In the days of glory (pictures from here)

There are some photos of the abandoned station from the 2000s (taken from here)

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Milwaukee Air And Water Show

Boris arrived on Friday night, and on Sunday morning, we were on our way to visit Anna and her Family in Milwaukee. That weekend was an Air and Water Show weekend, the same show that came to Chicago a couple weeks later.

My last two attempts to watch it in Chicago were not very enjoyable because you could hardly see things from the northern beaches, and getting closer takes time, and you end up in a huge crowd. In Milwaukee, it turned to be a way better!

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Helsinki Botanic Garden

On Monday, I met with my friend Natasha to discuss the details of their upcoming visit to Chicago. She suggested visiting the Helsinki Botanic Garden. Since I didn’t get a chance to see enough roses this time, I fully supported that idea.

A Long Bike Trip

We went on a long (3-hour) bike trip on Sunday. The weather continued to be perfect, and the sightseeing was gorgeous as usual. I couldn’t take any pictures during the ride because we kept going :), so you just have to trust me! These ones were at made at our turning point.

Sailing In The Finnish Gulf

Friends took us on a short sailing trip, and it was the best sailing trip of my life! Nothing like motion sickness, enjoyable weather, amazing views and a dog on my lap 🙂 Thank you, Zoe!

Back to Helsinki

That’s me on a ferry on the way back to Helsinki. I can’t even describe how happy I felt after these three days in Estonia!

Back To Tallinn

We returned to Tallinn at 8 PM and had a very late dinner at Pepper Sack:

I took the outside photo the next day, at daylight

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Narva

Narva is a border city, and nowadays, this border does not look peaceful. People who compare Tallinn and Narva might consider the latter one “depressed,” but that’s only if they never saw Ivangorod, a Russian city on the other side of the bridge. Boris saw both because he crossed this border a couple of times, and he says the contrast is striking.

You can see people on the bridge crossing by feet, or rather standing waiting in line at that point.

I took this picture when we visited the Narva Fortress. We had some time before the train back to Tallinn, and we went there. it turned out that there was some special occasion: they were reopening the city museum after some remodeling, so there was a ribbon cutting, official speeches, and TW news, We didn’t have enough time to see the museum, so we just walked around and saw the outdoor exhibit.