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Stopover in Detroit

It’s wild that after all the time I spent living and traveling through the Midwest, I never made it to Michigan. On my way back from Washington Island, I decided it was time to change that! I took a flight path that took me through Detroit and had one full day there.

I didn’t have a particularly ambitious itinerary for my visit. I wanted to go to the Motown Museum, but it was closed the day I was there. Instead, I explored the city center. Detroit is such an interesting city – for probably 50 or 60 years, it was thriving due to the automotive industry, but when the industry left, it felt into decline and for a while, Detroit considered the most dangerous city in America. Lately, there’s been somewhat of a resurgence. Definitely not back to where they were prior to going through urban blight, but there has been a concerted effort to improve the city and bring back more cultural institutions.

Part of how this manifests is through street art and outdoor spaces. There are a lot of monuments and murals throughout downtown, and there seem to be a lot of new parks or spaces for bars and restaurants to serve outside. It seemed to me as if some of that was working – while there were areas where I didn’t see anyone else out walking, there were a few streets that had a lot of residents out and about.

Canada is just on the other side of the river, although I didn’t cross over. I’m not sure if there’s anything particularly interesting to see on the Canadian side. I wanted to walk along the Riverwalk, which is meant to be pleasant, but it was closed off for some sort of event.

The main goal, besides exploring the city a bit, was to get Detroit style pizza! I ended up meeting a friend for dinner and trying it. I love that it was invented as a way to reuse the automotive plant parts, and I thought the end result was absolutely delicious.

I came away wishing I’d had a little more time in Detroit! I had a nice time exploring, but I didn’t get to go to any of the museums or anything, and it felt like the city had more to offer. I love seeing cities that are working to change negative perceptions – from what I could tell, Detroit is doing an amazing job to work on rebuilding itself after the deindustrialization that happened in the 70s and 80s. I would definitely be interested in going back.

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