Walking Walking

Even though I have been living in East Lansing for 1.5 years, I’ve never been to Detroit, a city that was just 100 miles away. I had no reason to. All my friends are either here in East Lansing, in Pittsburgh, or .. in Indonesia. Many MSU students are actually from Detroit or one of the surrounding area, so I have heard a lot of stories about detroit, detroit this, detroit that.

One of the first thing people say when I tell them that I’m going to detroit is actually.. be careful. It’s a very dangerous city, there’s lots of crime. According to this site, detroit is ranked second to last (for crime) and third to last (for murders). So you see we (Nana and I) were quite apprehensive.

Our primary purpose was to actually exchange foreign currency. East Lansing had one site, but the exchange rate was too low. So we decided to go to Detroit, and instead of just going there to exchange rate, we decided to make a day of it and visit downtown Detroit to see what a real american city is like.. not like the small american village known as East Lansing.

We took off early from home, printing out all kinds of maps from google. We first went to Birmingham where the foreign currency exchange was. Birmingham, was a business district, and thus was very clean, and very elegant. People walked around in expensive looking trench coats and ate in expensive (translation: we can’t afford it) looking restaurants. The buildings were neatly built (they weren’t all over the place), it seemed like it was planned. There were no real tower buildings, so it had the cozy feeling of a small town center area instead of a big metropolitan.

After basking in the scene, we went to the next stop on our itinerary, Belle Isle park. Detroit is near the US-Canada border, so you can actually see Windsor, Canada from some places of Detroit. The Belle Isle park allows you to see both downtown Detroit and Canada (as well as the bridge that connects them) at the same time. It was thrilling to be able to see canada, as well as watching the beautiful view of downtown Detroit. Windsor Canada wasn’t as stunning as Detroit, but it’s still Canada right?

Our last stop was the Campus Martius park in downtown detroit. This was billed as Detroit’s gathering place. There was an ice rink, a christmas tree, hard rock cafe, as well as a strange looking structure. This place really seemed to be the heart of Detroit, where people gather. It was pretty cool.

Of course, our trip wasn’t trouble free. Twice we almost took wrong turns and ended up to the gates to the US - Canada Border. The first time I had to stop (and worry a bit), then finally made a U-turn to get out. The second time, I nearly turned at the ambassador bridge, if I had turned on the ambassador bridge, I would have to queue with a lot of really big trucks. While searching for the ambassador bridge, which a friend told us was really a beautiful scenery (he was wrong, it was full of big ugly trucks), we got lost. We ended up in a creepy dilapidated neighborhood behind various detroit’s factories… so I locked the door and looked at my map and off we went.

Click my detroit trip map to see the sites I’ve visited

When you think about Ford, you think Detroit. When you think Detroit, well, there’s a lot of things you may think about, but Ford is probably one of them. Henry Ford is probably one of the most famous people in the car industry. I bet most people wouldn’t know the founders of any other car-maker (okay perhaps Enzo Ferrari), but who doesn’t know Henry Ford?

All cities have art centers, downtown view, science centers, and parks. Each city however also has its own special mark, something special that differentiates it with other city. New york has the statue of liberty, Washington (DC) the white house, Clevelend has the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Pittsburgh has the Mt. Washington view, Atlanta the coca cola factory, and Detroit has the Henry Ford museum and the Greenfield Village.

The Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village are located in Dearborn, a suburb of Detroit MI. Both these places were built with the purpose of collecting and preserving the best of human intelligence.

Henry Ford’s riches certainly made it possible. When you have almost unlimited money at your disposal, I guess you get bored buying cars, houses, and jewelry :). It is still amazing to see how his riches were used, for education and humanity.

The Greenfield Village, which we visited first is a large complex consisting of historical houses. These were important houses in America’s (and in some part the world’s) history. It shows what life was like in the old days.

However the greenfield village did not just contain any old houses in there. The houses in Greenfield Village were original (yes, original, well at least the parts that wasn’t renovated) houses of very famous people. The Wright brothers, Edison, Heinz (the ketchup guy), Webster (yes the dictionary man), and some other people who I have never heard of. It even had Edison’s original research complex (he had his own research complex…), and the boarding house for his worker’s nearby.

There was a sign in front of Edison’s complex that showed his ambitions. He wanted to create a major invention every 6 months and a minor invention once a week. Simply an amazing man.

The next part of the trip was the Henry Ford Museum itself. It had mainly cars, planes, trains, and round houses.
I thought the Greenfield Village was more exciting. I guess I prefer going to science museums, than just any museums. It gave a look on America’s past and culture, especially the culture of driving. Here’s a picture of us at an american diner (served no food though, it was just a replica, even the food were plastic )

It took us about 5 hours to get through this place. It wasn’t enough. There was just too many things to see, we were late because somebody (you know who you are) needs to spend 20 minutes in the bathroom he he he…

All in all we had a great time that day. Did a lot of things, also learnt a lot. I know what you’re thinking "Learning.. that’s like a school thing…"…

Here’s a satellite view of the Henry Ford museum and the Greenfield Village, in case you plan on visiting.