Another early start to the day, up at 6:30 to do some work and have a staff meeting via Teams. No breakfast this morning as we were still pretty full from the beef from last night. Coffee and a strong one was in order. The coffee bar downstairs, while they use Starbucks, still make a good strong latte. The baristas are also very friendly. Todays itinerary consists of 2 museums, the Ford Piquette Plant and the Detroit Historical Museum.
If the Qline would have been running it would take us to both places, but the number 4 bus does as well. The bus system here is horrible, no social distancing (but they require masks) and they just do not keep to any kind of real schedule. We have waited up to 20 to 30 minutes for a bus, when three were have supposed to have stopped. Many times, we just end up flagging down a cab. The morning seems to be the better time to get a bus and have it be close to on time. The Ford Plant was about 3 long blocks from the stop, but the morning was crips and low humidity (fall is in the air).
The museum is where Henry Ford invented the Model T and where the first 1500 or so were produced. This is not where the automated assembly line was invented, that was at the Highland Park factory. You can take a guided or tour. I highly the guided, you will get more information than you probably want, but it is very informative, I think our guide as older than a Model T. Most of the cars on display are actually owned by other people and they let them be on display so they can store their cars for free.
There are over 65 cars on display, pretty much every model up to the T ever made by Ford, the A, B C, F N, R S and of course the T. There are also other makes on display such a Cadillac (interesting fact, the first Cadillac was actually built by Ford).
The history behind the Ford Motor Company and the cars built by Henry Ford, was very interesting. I will say by the end of our just over tour, I knew more about Ford that I needed.
the tour we headed back to the bus to our next stop, this bus was actually on schedule, so we didnt have to worry about time issues for our next visit. Before we went to the History Museum, we had lunch. We were going to Wasabi, a Korean/Japanese place, but they were only doing take out so instead we went a couple of doors down to Babo. This is a very hipster breakfast/brunch place. And I mean very hipster. It appeared to be women owned and operated and most of the customers were women. The menu was diverse but what we had was very good. We started with Fried Artichokes (this can never be bad,) Unlike in Italy, these were battered like calamari and very good and crispy but not overpowering as the flavor of the artichoke still came through.
Jerry had a brunch dish, the Diego Skillet (yes named aver Diego Rivera), they also had a Frida Skilled (you got it Frida Kahlo). It was a very good skillet with chorizo, home fries (which were very crispy), onions, peppers and two eggs over easy. I had the Detroiter, a twist on the classic Ruben, using coleslaw instead of
sauerkraut. It was messy but good, and the corn beef was very thin sliced and crispy. We also side of, fries, very crispy.
For a historical museum it is a pretty big building takes up about half a block and has four floors of exhibits. Naturally, it is all about the history of Detroit, including some of the not so pretty parts of its past such as the 1967 riots. There was of course a section on the auto industry and a small section on Motown. I think it was small because there is an entire museum dedicated to Motown, but it is currently closed as a result of flood damage, so we did not get to visit.
There was also a special exhibit on the 1920s which focused on the 20s from the black point of view. It was very interesting. The most interesting section of the museum was the section devoted to the Underground Railway. I wish it would have been bigger, but it was a good history lesson in the underground railway outside of Harriett Tubman.
