Tag Archives: travel

Detroit – 4

Comerica Park is conveniently located downtown on the site of an old law school. Seems like no one uses that name; everyone I heard referred to it as “Tigers Stadium”. Maybe the block of land the place is on is the “Park”, while the building itself is the “Stadium”. Whatever. What I do know is that it’s still very appropriate to call it “Tigers Stadium”; there are plenty of tiger statues around.

Photo (tweaked by me to bring out details) of one of the many tiger-head “gargoyles” around the stadium exterior. Note the baseball in its mouth.

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Detroit – 3

It is truth universally acknowledged, that the best thing to do in a city you are visiting for the first time is to take a walking tour led by a local guide. Well, it’s acknowledged by me, anyway. I booked a downtown tour with City Tour Detroit. Lorrie was the guide for our group of about 10 people; she was very knowledgeable and pleasant.

We started in the Guardian Building, an art-deco masterpiece known as the “Cathedral of Finance” (since it started as the Union Trust Building), in comparison to the Woolworth Building’s “Cathedral of Commerce” moniker. The style – both exterior and interior – belong to that subset of art deco called “Mayan Revival”. Lots of rectangular shapes, bold colors, mosaics…. At the far end of the main lobby is a giant fresco with a stylized depiction of Michigan, showing all the industries that power the state’s economy.

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Detroit – 2

If you must know, I stayed at the Hollywood Casino Hotel in Greektown. I don’t know why it has the “Hollywood” name; I never noticed any connections with Hollywood. “Greektown”, on the other hand, is a small neighborhood that was settled by Greek immigrants in the early 1900s (after the Germans who arrived in the early 1800s moved out). It’s a very small neighborhood – maybe four blocks, at most – but there’s a very high concentration of Greek restaurants and bars. And not your basic “Hellenic” diner places; these are real honest-to-Zeus Greek restaurants. Don’t let the tourist propaganda fool you – if there’s no festival or event happening, the place is fairly ordinary.

It does happen to be rather centrally located in “downtown” Detroit, within easy walking distance of a lot of attractions.

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Detroit – 1

This year’s big vacation is a trip to Detroit. Now you’re probably asking “Why Detroit? Isn’t it a dump?” Well, maybe so, but it has a couple of advantages. First, I’ve never been there before. Changing planes at the airport doesn’t count. Second, it’s home to a major league baseball team – so I can take in a game or two. And finally, there are direct flights from my local airport to Detroit. Put it all together, and it makes a little sense.

As always, I’m going to pad my post count as much as possible.

So before I arrive in the “Motor City”, my tips on packing and other travel-related stuff. Continue reading →

ECLIPSE 2024 – Part 4

And the usual final handful of observations to wrap up my visit to Rochester.

First, THERE ARE WIND FARMS IN THE CATSKILLS!

I’m driving along Route 17, enjoying the nice landscape that surely looks amazing in the fall when the leaves are changing colors (and not in early April when the buds have yet to appear). I round a bend, and OMG WIND TURBINES looming over the next hill in the distance! It was quite startling, actually. Those things are HUGE. Continue reading →

ECLIPSE 2024 – Part 2

Of course, if I’m going to be driving for half a day to a place, I’m going to want to make sure that there’s more than one reason to be going there. Experiencing a total solar eclipse at a winery, no matter how awesome that might be, isn’t enough to justify the trip.

Fortunately, Rochester is a big enough city to have plenty of things to see and do. While I do maintain that any community, no matter how small, is going to have at least one point of interest, if you’re going to make a vacation trip there, you want your destination to be big enough to be home to at least one or two minor league professional sports teams.

While Rochester is the home to the Red Wings (the AAA affiliate of the Washington Nationals) as well as teams in other sports, the one attraction that is unique to the city is the Strong National Museum of Play – also known as the Toy Museum.

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ECLIPSE 2024 – Part 1

“I can drive to the path of totality!” I said. “And in just one day! I’ll make a vacation out of it!”

I think I wound up in the only place in New York where the skies were completely overcast. Sunday was beautiful; mild temperatures and completely clear skies. Tuesday was unseasonably warm, with a few scattered clouds and a high, thin haze.

But on Eclipse Day, at 3:15 in the afternoon…..

Not pictured: Old man yelling

And because of the cloud cover, almost all of the eclipse phenomena – sudden drop in temperature, weird animal behavior – didn’t happen. All we got was the “twilight all the way around the horizon”.

Looking towards the City of Rochester

We also noted that it seemed to get lighter much faster than it got dark….

Well, at least the Casa Larga Vineyards had a very nice “Toast to Totality” event. I might have stayed there a bit longer (it lasted to 5 pm), but a little after four o’clock, a light drizzle started.

Ya know, I’m not sure I care for all these wineries becoming “event spaces” with sales rooms attached to them. I’d love to chat with the winery staff (NOT the sales staff) about their vines and grapes and how they deal with pests and how they are coping with global warming. Or how it seems that there are so many competitions these days that pretty much any winery can win some medals, or how a person’s particular sense of taste might affect how they enjoy a particular wine – there might be an equivalent to “color blindness” for taste, and we do know that your sense of hearing changes as you get older…. I suppose they’ve got to make extra money somehow…..

But anyway, my trip to Rochester wasn’t a complete waste – I made plans to do other things there, and I’ll tell you about them in the next few posts.

Boston – 6

As always, a few random thoughts to wrap this thing up.

At least in “downtown” Boston, streets can change name without notice. Streets at opposite sides of a perfect four-way intersection (a “+”) will have different names for no apparent reason. Arch turns into Chauncey, Essex becomes Boylston, and Summer changes into Winter without going through Autumn (or Spring).

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