We celebrated our 32nd anniversary last week and wanted to take a trip over a long weekend. We didn’t want to have a lot of travel, and since we’ve been pretty much any where that we can get to in 3 hours, we looked at direct flights out of Chattanooga–and flight time was limited to 3 hours as well. Neither of us had ever been to Detroit, so we did some research.
Here are some facts that sold us:
- The Detroit Institute of Arts has been rated the number one art museum in the country–and their collection was recently valued at $84B.
- The Henry Ford Museum Campus includes the Museum of American Innovation and Greenfield (an 84 acre outdoor museum that included the Wright Brothers’ home and shop and Edison’s Menlo Park and West Orange labs.)
- The Motown Museum
- More theaters than anywhere outside of NYC.
We left bright and early last Friday from Chattanooga, and arrived in Detroit around 9 and were on the road about 9:45. The Detroit airport has been remodeled and is really nice. The first order of business was breakfast. We wanted a local diner and found GJ’s Diner not too far from the airport. I had the Greek Omelet (gyro meat, onions, peppers, feta, and Tzatziki sauce) and my husband had the Denver omelet. Really good and so much food.
From there, we went to the Henry Ford in Dearborn. We got a membership which is the best deal. We went through the Museum of American Innovation.
We decided that we’d had enough after a few hours and went to the hotel to check in and rest. We stayed at the Book Tower (Roost Hotel) and that was our introduction to the AMAZING art deco architecture of Detroit–Detroit has more art deco buildings than anywhere else in the world.
Roost Hotel is apartment style rooms. We got a Queen studio. It worked out fine. The Rotunda Bar in the lobby and they make great cocktails. We had paper planes.
We had reservations at Cliff Bell’s (a famous jazz club founded during prohibition) at 5:15 and it was close by, so we walked. We had dinner there–I had the chicken paillard and my husband had the osso bucco. We shared an appetizer of brussels sprouts. The food and drinks were great. The musicians started at 7:30 and they were very talented, but not quite our jam. When we left, it was raining pretty hard so we were soaked by the time we got back to our room. Fortunately, Book Tower has hot water and we were able to warm up with hot showers.
The next morning, we got up and went to Hudson Cafe on Woodward Avenue. It was just a few blocks from the hotel. We stopped at a bakery, Cannelle, on our way back. Their baked goods are delicious and absolutely stunning. We went back to our room to grab our stuff and headed out to the Detroit Institute of Arts.
It opens at 10 and we arrived shortly thereafter and found convenient and inexpensive parking on the street. We went through most of the 2nd floor and our two favorite items were these:
If you go on a Saturday, and want a quiet, contemplative visit, go early because by 1 p.m., there were tons of kids (many of whom didn’t really want to be there.)
We wanted to go to Buddy’s pizza close to the hotel, but it was crazy busy, so we went to the one out in Dearborn. It’s classic Detroit style pizza, and really good.
We went back to the hotel to freshen up and rest and then we headed to the Motown Museum. The actual museum is closed for renovations, but we went to the Ester Gordy center just down the street and visited the Psychadelic Soul exhibit. It was small, but interesting and they have great tour guides.
For dinner on Saturday night, we went to Baobab Fare, an East African restaurant that has been nominated for a couple of James Beard awards. I had a beef dish and my husband had a grilled chicken dish. Both were really, really good. The place was packed the whole time we were there, so I recommend a reservation.
We had tickets to Suffs on Saturday night, so we made our way to the Fisher building where the Fisher Theater is located. This is another absolutely STUNNING art deco building.
It’s an amazing building. Unfortunately, they renovated the theater in 1961, and while it’s really nice, it doesn’t compare to the rest of the building. The seats are comfortable and everyone has a good view. Suffs is a fantastic show and we highly recommend it if you have the chance to see it.
On Sunday, we went to Avenue Brunch house in Dearborn. The food was really good. We were lucky and arrived just ahead of the big rush. We highly recommend making reservations. From there, we went back to the Henry Ford and went through Greenfield, the outdoor museum. It’s 80 acres, so wear comfortable shoes. We had absolutely perfect weather.
After all that walking, we went back to the hotel and rested and then got ready for dinner. We went to the Rotunda bar in the hotel and met new friends and then we had dinner at Le Supreme–a French brasserie. The food was excellent, but the service wasn’t and it’s super loud. We wouldn’t go back there because of the noise.
On Monday, we had to pack up all our stuff. Before we checked out, we went to the Dime Store for breakfast. It was really good. I had the Spicy Cuban chicken bowl, and my husband had a mushroom omelet. From there we wandered around and saw the Joe Louis monument and the Spirit of Detroit sculpture (on the riverfront), and then we saw a bunch more buildings on the way back, including the Penobscot building.
The buildings are just amazing–the decoration on the outside, and all the decorative elements on the interiors are marvelous.
My husband booked us a tour of the Guardian building for 11, so we checked out and stored our bags at the hotel and made our way over to the Guardian building. The do regular tours there, and we highly recommend taking one–they’re only an hour, so easy to squeeze in.
We had such a big breakfast, that we weren’t hungry for lunch, so we went back to the hotel to pick up the car and our luggage and we headed to a couple of antique malls that I found when I went to Lansing with my husband for a conference. We found some cool door knobs for the basement, and some oil cords for my husband’s old fans.
We didn’t want to get caught in rush hour traffic, so we headed back to the airport. Everything went smoothly on the way home and we were actually in the car leaving the airport for home at our scheduled arrival time.
It was a great trip, but, boy, was I tired the next day. I even had to take a nap.
We want to go back, but next time, we will schedule more architectural tours because the architecture is truly STUNNING.
Cathy At Home on the River 