catch-up: Detroit
Friday, December 9th, 2005The flight to Phoenix and Detroit was great, we hit the Jet stream coming over Colorado – lots of turbulance, but other than that everything went fine. Arring at Detroit I quickly discovered why they call it ‘Motor City’ – they looked at me like I had two heads when I asked if I could get a bus downtown.
The bus ride was an experience in its self – the airport is miles, and I mean miles away from Detroit – with nothing but strip malls visible from the road – after what felt like a couple of hours later we got to Detroit. I stayed in the Shorecrest motel, near the Ren Centre – it wasn’t bad – a wee bit tatty, but nothing to complain about – especially at that price.
My first impression of Detroit was that it was a bitterly cold, windswept, wasteland – but remembering Portland, I quickly got over it and discovered that the downtown holds some immacuately preserved art deco buildings – I spent over an hour in the Guardian building – there’s no point talking about it though – well, not without pictures – which are on a CD somewhere.
The people in the city were all very friendly and helpful, well that is except for the latino goon in the Ren Centre who confiscated my camera and threatened to arrest me for taking photos of the railings in the lobby – I never realised that GM runs it’s own private police force, one with detention powers.
Walking around the downtown area, you wonder if GM and Ford are killing the city or keeping it alive – the only real shopping was in the GM sponsored Ren Centre which is accessible by the ‘people mover’ monorail – it’s great, running in a loop from the Ren to the Ford Field where the superbowl is going to be hosted.
The city is on a vast scale, it’s several miles from downtown to the midtown area, public transport coverage is patchy at best and people drive everywhere, as a tourist without a car I found it difficult to get around.
The game was excellent – Stevie and Shannahan both scored, much to the approval of the home crowd, the atmosphere was great, hell just being there was great. We went for beers, I lost at darts and found a new home for Paddington – he’s going to be travelling the World with Alexis and her brother.
I would like to have spent more time in Detroit, I didn’t have a chance to explore the Fox theatre or the Fisher building – my cabbie took me on a free guided tour of midtown and took me out to the motown museum which was really nice of him, he knew his stuff – apparently Madonna is a Detroiter!
I never had any problems in the city – everybody was friendly and chatty – I left my camera in a diner/bar and somebody ran after me to return it, although that wasn’t the first thought that occured to me at the time.
I caught the Wolverine through to Chicago, where I was met by an Amtrak lady – apparently there was a bug in my railpass and they wanted to sort it out for me (!) – that would never happen in the UK – they were very appologetic and got it fixed in about ten minutes – more nice, helpful people – why can’t people in England be more like this.
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