Violet Sky

Continuing on our now three year tradition of traveling to the rust belt in fall, which is actually entirely coincidental up until this point, we took a long weekend trip to Detroit, Michigan to visit my friend for her 40th birthday. I’ve always been interested in seeing Detroit – its rise to being an economic powerhouse, its steep decline into an example how far a city can fall, and its persistent revitalization efforts has always fascinated me.

After much agonizing about whether to fly Alaska/One World to boost my Alaska Airlines status, or to fly another airline for better times, we ended up on a direct Delta flight from PDX to DTW. All the Alaska flights connected through SeaTac and either left or arrived at sub-optimal times, and it was worth a little extra money plus missing out on a few thousand miles to have an easy, direct flight.

We arrived at DTW, notably absent Alaska’s 20 minute bag drop guarantee, and ended up waiting at the baggage carousel for about 40 minutes. Following that, we waited for half an hour for the shuttle to take us to the Avis/Budget car rental lot. When we arrived at the lot, we saw two employees working the desk, and at least 50 people in line, including trailing out both doors of the building, to pick up their car. After about 10 minutes of waiting, we cancelled the car rental, booked a different one at another location for the next day, and walked out of the rental lot so we could call a Lyft.

Now, the day before we left for this trip, I had been stung by either a yellowjacket or a wasp. I’m mildly allergic to yellowjackets, but since I had been stung by one earlier this summer, I wasn’t too worried about it, knowing what symptoms I had the last time. This allergic reaction ended up being much larger than the previous one, and my arm swelled up so much that I couldn’t bend it to put my hair into a ponytail by the time we landed in Detroit. I was really loathe to seek medical care for it, because I didn’t want to consume the rest of the night waiting in an urgent care, but at this point, it was seeping pus and my husband had to give me space because my arm was so hot, so he eventually talked me into going to urgent care.

The doctor who saw me commented that it was remarkably infected for something that had happened only 24 hours prior, and sent me on my way with a steroid shot and a couple prescriptions for antibiotics. Not a promising start to the trip!

The next day, we took a Lyft to the car rental spot, which was a weird location in a nearly abandoned mall with an enormous amount of parking – you can really tell that Detroit built itself around car transportation, as you drive around. Unfortunately, this Avis/Budget location was also having a customer service crisis, and we spent more than an hour waiting for them to find someone to drive our car from the airport to the abandoned mall.

We were absolutely starving by the time we were done, as we had figured we would quickly pick up the car and then get breakfast, but at least all the waiting time made it easy to find places nearby to eat. We decided on a Yemeni place called Karam Brunch House, where we both had lahm soghar, which was delicious.

After that, it was time to head out to the town my friend lives in, which is about an hour east of Detroit. We had a lovely time on a flat-bottomed boat that toodled around one of the many connected lakes, though I was again accosted by a yellowjacket and my friend’s brother had to smash it to get it out of my hair.

The next day was our chance to explore Detroit. I may have said this on prior trip reports, but I really like to just show up in a city and find cool stuff to do. We had done a little googling of things to do, and didn’t find anything that really jumped out, so the next morning, we hopped in the car and headed downtown to see what we could find.

Our parking lot was right across from the Little Caesar’s world headquarters, charmingly, though I thought it was a little odd that the business underneath was not a Little Caesars. Downtown was quite empty, which was not totally unexpected, given that it was Sunday, but I still found myself surprised at how few people were walking around. It was quiet, clean, and felt very safe – just empty. I was thrilled to find a free people mover, which we took full advantage of to move ourselves to different parts of the downtown area.

We had considered trying to go to Windsor, Ontario, just to say we’d been, but with the government shutdown, we’d heard that lines were slow getting back and forth, so we decided to go down to the waterfront and just observe Canada from not-so-afar. Windsor had a lovely, large Canadian flag, while the American side performed its usual gusto in asserting that this side was super duper America.

We continued walking around, looking for something to do. We found our way to the shopping district, where we failed to find anything we wanted to buy. We then wandered into a nice little corner that seemed geared towards millenials, with a few hip shops and restaurants and outdoor areas for relaxing. There were some people here, but still not many. Eventually we stumbled upon Detroit City FC’s team store, where my husband bought a shirt and I considered getting a sticker pack, but I only really wanted two of the stickers in the pack, so I ended up putting it back.

The buildings downtown are a mix of styles, given that they all clearly went up at different times, but I enjoyed this art deco building quite a bit. We wandered into the GM Renaissance Center, which had a wide variety of old and new cars on display, but little else to entertain us. My husband wanted to try a Detroit-style coney dog, so we started heading to a place that has been in business since 1887, but were almost immediately waylaid by a Cava that we ran into on the way. I’m never one to let a Cava pass me by, since we don’t have them in Portland, so we both enjoyed our Cava bowls and then my husband had a coney dog by himself later on. He said it was fine.

In our wanderings, we came across the Spirit of Detroit, which I loved. This is also on the shirt that my husband ended up buying at the soccer store. We spent some time sitting at the waterfront, where I was chased by multiple yellowjackets in which I can only assume at this point was a concerted effort on behalf of the species.

I really enjoy Detroit-style pizza. When Little Caesars first rolled out their deep dish pizza (which is really just a Detroit-style pizza), I was thrilled. So I was excited to try Detroit-style pizza in Detroit. My husband found a thread of Reddit, which had people arguing about the best pizza in the city, and from that thread, we picked Michigan & Trumbull. It was excellent, and far more food than either of us needed.

This is where my photos end, because this is where we ran out of things to do. We tried driving around Wayne State, but it was dead – again, a Sunday, but it’s also a university during the school term, so it was odd. We drove around a few more places, trying to see if there was something we were missing, but at the end, I had to conclude that Detroit felt like a city that had built it, and was waiting for people to come. Clean, quiet, empty. Kind of a bummer, since I went in interested in the history of the city and fully expecting to like it.

But, the real point of the trip was my friend’s birthday, and that went over amazingly, so all’s well that ends well. It just also makes for a short trip report!