Tag: detroit

Looking For Coffee In Detroit

Several more things are left from last weekend’s trip to Michigan. We had two great positive experiences in Detroit: Michigan Central and Ford Plant, and one-and-a-half bad experiences. A “half-experience” was that, once again, it appeared to be challenging to find any relatively fast and decent quality food, and one really bad – it appeared to be impossible to find a coffee place in the afternoon. I ended up having the second coffee of the day when we returned to Lena’s place.

On Sunday, we stayed in Ann Arbor and spent most of the day in the Downtown area. Lena was sure that coffee wouldn’t be a problem there, but the place where we stopped to get coffee turned out to be really bad. Lena went back to the coffee shop and asked for a new one, but it was only marginally better.

Finally, Lena spotted Roos Roaster and said that they should be good. When we entered, I told a barista that I had to have one positive coffee experience and what he would recommend. He recommended a long, and it was perfect.

Both I and the reputation of Ann Arbor were saved!

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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Historic Homes in Greenfield Village

Henry Ford moved several historic homes to the Greenfield village, including his own childhood home:

Then there was the Wright brothers’ childhood home and their bicycle shop. Just a couple of months ago, I read a book The Wright Brothers by David McCullough. And now I remember that the author visited Greenfield village, but when I read the book, I didn’t pay attenention.

This bike is one of the actual bikes from the Wright brothers’ shop
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Model T Ride

The only thing which was not perfect with this trip was the weather: it was bare 70F, and it rained on Saturday evening, but honestly, the weather did not stop us from having fun.

We spent the whole Sunday in the Henry Ford village and museum; we arrived 15 minutes after it was open and left 15 minutes before it closed. We hardly saw a half of everything, and my brain was exploding with all the new information! I won’t have time to blog about everything, so there will probably be bits and pieces, not necessarily in order of importance.

Speaking about Henry Ford and Model T, you can’t stop feeling the mixture of amazement with the greatest human mind achievements and, at the same time, the realization of all nowadays environmental problems starting back then.

That’s where it all began!
Waiting in line for Model T rides
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Detroit

This weekend, I am visiting my friend Lena in Ann Arbor. This time, however, it’s not just an Ann Arbor visit. Today, we spent the whole day in Detroit. It was my first ever visit to this city with a rich history and multiple ups and downs. We started the day by visiting Detroit Art Institute.

Rivera Court

Then we had lunch in a hidden in a basement cafe with incredible food for half of Chicago’s prices.

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