Who Loves Detroit?!!

I started this blog roughly six months ago with the full intention of updating it on at least a somewhat regular basis. (Epic fail!) I’m going to try to do better from now on.

Our original plan for Monday was to start by trading books at John K. King, check into the hotel, have dinner, and go to the show. Luckily, we called the bookstore before heading out and learned that they weren’t accepting trades that day, so we had some extra time to hang out with Flash before leaving.

This has nothing to do with Meandering the Mitten, but I love my dog!

When we finally headed into Detroit, I was very proud to know that I could still find my way to St. Andrew’s Hall by memory. (Thinking back, I can’t believe I hadn’t been there since the Lucky Boys Confusion show in 2007.)

The Hilton Garden Inn is only about five blocks from St. Andrew’s, and it’s only a couple blocks from Greektown. We checked in and found this in the elevator:

We can’t be the only people who have a dirty enough mind to find it hilarious that it says that in a Hilton hotel.

I didn’t think to take any photos of the suite itself, but it was nice. We had a separate seating area, a Jacuzzi, and a minifridge (which came in handy for our leftovers later). The staff was very friendly, and the view from our room wasn’t too bad either.

(Note to travelers who may be staying at this hotel in the future: don’t pay the $20 to have your car valet parked. When we checked out Tuesday morning, I watched the guy pull out of a space in the $4 self-park lot adjacent to the hotel. I’m definitely not a fan of paying (five times the amount!) for something I could have done myself.)

After getting settled, it was time to explore!

How cool are we in our Tom Cruise sunglasses? You can call him Joel, and you can call me Maverick.

Neither of us had been out to Greektown in a couple of years, and it was a little more chain-ified (Coldstone, Five Guys Burger & Fries, etc.) than either of us remembered…and the mirrored monstrosity behind us in the photo is the new Greektown Hotel. Most of our old favorites were still there too.

When it’s my turn to pick the restaurant for dinner in Greektown, I usually pick Pizza Papalis because that’s where we always used to go when I was little (back when Trapper’s Alley was still there with the store that only sold things that were purple!), and because I love, love, LOVE their breadsticks with the dippy cheese.

However, it was Branden’s turn to choose, and he chose Niki’s.

To start, I had a small house salad with their homemade garlic ranch dressing. It was a very simple salad—just your basic iceberg lettuce, sliced cucumbers, tomatoes and a little bit of onions, but the homemade dressing made it perfect. Branden had a small Greek salad that had mountains of feta cheese on it, and it came with Niki’s homemade Greek dressing. I’m not a fan so I didn’t try it, but I hear it was delicious.

And then our pizza came.

The colors seem washed out a bit from the flash…the picture doesn’t really do this pizza justice.)

Topped with pepperoni, mushrooms, onions and green peppers, it was incredible. The crust was buttery and crisp, and I would compare it a little bit to Jet’s Pizza (maybe because it’s square, I don’t know), except it was a LOT less greasy than Jet’s. We took half of the pizza back to the hotel for later!

From Niki’s, we went to the Astoria Pastry Shop. I love that place. We took a few minutes to check everything out, and ended up selecting a heart sugar cookie (tradition), a pecan turtle brownie, a bird nest (filo-dough, honey & pistachios, I think), another honey treat (I have no idea..it was Branden’s!), and a raspberry oatmeal bar to take home for my picky mom.

I don’t know what it is about the white box and the red string, but it makes me so happy! The box is all I thought to take a picture of, though. (Let’s be real, though—put a pecan turtle brownie in front of me and taking a picture of it is the LAST thing on my mind.)

After dropping all our treats off back at the hotel, we headed out to the Sia show at St. Andrew’s. I didn’t take my camera because I didn’t want to be told to take it back to the car (or hotel room…whatever), but as it turned out, cameras were totally allowed at the show (dammit). Sia and her band put on an amazing performance! All of the new songs she played were awesome (especially "Clap Your Hands") and I can’t wait til the new album comes out in June.

(Fun Fact: St. Andrew’s now serves Leinenkugel Berryweiss. LOVE IT!)

Tuesday morning, we checked out of the Hilton and set off for John K. King Used & Rare Books to trade about 200 pounds of books we don’t need anymore. They took almost everything and we still have store credit for the next time we go (even after a quick run to the smaller John K. King North in Ferndale!). Even though I’ve been there a few times, that store is so big and has so many books that I kind of lose my mind when I go. I forgot to take pictures. (Clearly I need to work on being a better blogger?)

Our last stop before picking up Flash and going home was New York Bagel. I can’t find an official website for them, but here’s a link to their reviews on Yelp.

To be fair, it’s not really in Detroit…it’s in Ferndale. But they have the best sandwiches ever.

I got The Detroiter on a sesame bagel:

The Detroiter is ham, turkey, muenster cheese, roasted red peppers, and honey mustard.

Branden got The Manhattan on an onion roll:

The Manhattan is corned beef, swiss cheese, and Russian dressing. There might be more to it than that, but I don’t remember.

All in all, it was a great mini-getaway. It ended up being pretty food-centric though, which was okay because all the food was so delicious. We would have liked to go to the DIA, but they are closed on Mondays, and we didn’t have time on Tuesday. Oh well…another day, another trip.

First Post!

I had the idea to start this photoblog because, well, as much as I whine and complain about the weather here, I do have a little bit of love for Michigan. It's a beautiful state, and over the last few years, my almost-husband and I have been taking roadtrips to explore more of it. This particular photo was taken in early October 2005 on the shores of Lake Huron....somewhere near Cheboygan if my memory is correct (and frankly, that's a crapshoot).

I have quite a few past photos to upload, and I will hopefully be uploading new ones once in a while as well.