My husband and I crossed the border last weekend on a day trip to Windsor in Ontario, Canada. It's a lovely city, but getting there is half the adventure.
After a frantic search for our passports last week, rules were suspended the day before our trip because gazillions of people have applied for passports and clogged the whole system. All we suffered from a customs agent was a droll recitation of questions: "What is your purpose for coming? ... Do you have any firearms? ... Do you think my job could be any more boring? ..."
And excuse me, but I am surprised that more people don't die on the Ambassador Bridge every day. It's not like entry and exit points are very clearly marked, and semi-trucks don't wait for stupid tourists to figure it out. You have to be a brave, aggressive driver to cross this bridge, which has signs all over both sides of the border announcing "BRIDGE TO USA" or "BRIDGE TO CANADA" -- in case you were thinking about swimming across the Detroit River. There is also a tunnel, but I don't do tunnels under water.
Once we crossed the bridge, we got a little lost and ended up in a pleasingly ethnically diverse area but also an obviously economically depressed area. The riverfront and casino areas are so beautiful, but it's a little spiritually depressing to see so much money and development go into one area while another area just two blocks away seems neglected.
Speaking of economically depressed, I dropped $60 in 20 minutes at Casino Windsor. We don't take ATM cards into casinos, so that was it for me. My husband, Ted, fared a little better because he doesn't sit there mindlessly punching buttons on the slot machines like I do. I don't care. I'm there to zone out and forget about work and spend the exact same money I do on shopping for shoes to zone out and forget about work. That's my payoff. Ted might have liked to recoup more to cover his other expenses, though.
Earlier in the day we had traveled to Dearborn Heights, Mich. to purchase a 1965 Corvair. My husband and his father are Corvair enthusiasts. I am a husband and father-in-law enthusiast, so I guess I have to like the car too. Once I met the family selling it, thought, I was in love with this car. See more on my Whirled Peas blog here.
In Windsor, we celebrated the car purchase with a scrumptious dinner at City Beer Market. Mussels, lobster tails, steak, scallops, shrimp, pasta alfredo, cake-high apple pie, homemade ice cream, world beers on tap and the best purple cocktail I've ever tasted, a martini called "Professor Plum." Beer Market is on Chatham Street, next to the famous Chatham Street Grill, and conveniently across from Habana Cigar Club, where we considered whether we would risk bringing back some hand-rolled Cuban contraband.
Our walk along the riverfront -- the real dessert to a meal like that -- was incredibly enjoyable. In about 20 yards you can overhear 10 different languages. It's precious. It's also very family friendly with several playgrounds, plenty of memorial benches for resting, and paved paths. Odette Sculpture Park is amazing -- you can watch a slide show of it here, although it showcases only a fraction of the pieces. My favorite were two white tubes at least six stories high, each with one perfect curly-q in its middle and capped at the top with black. To me they look like minimalist swans, to others they look like stubbed out cigarettes or maybe just two big poles with a circle in the middle.
That was the last sculpture I saw before heading back over the bridge to our homeland, complete with Michigan's wacky left-turns and completely pathetic chances to get back on I-75 South. It's like they don't want you to leave or something. Maybe we'll just stay longer in Canada next time.
By Courier online editor Rebecca Conklin
