Since they were only coming for a long weekend, I didn’t want to spend a lot of time driving across the state, so we mainly stayed in the Ann Arbor area. (Plus, they wouldn’t definitively tell me what they wanted to do, leaving me to plan the itinerary.) Our first full day in Ann Arbor, we went into the downtown/central campus area to see some of the university and visit the free museums. We parked by the library and made our way to the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA) via the library and Cherry Republic. The art museum isn’t huge, but it’s also not as small as you might think. There’s an old wing and a new wing that was completed in 2009. Both wings are generally organized by type/location of art (i.e. modern art, Asian art, etc.), and there’s a good variety (so not twenty-seven rooms all filled with portraits of European royalty in the 1600s). Some highlights include Tiffany doors/windows, swords, a few Picasso pieces (modern art), and the old building itself (it’s a nice building, okay?). After about an hour, we moved on to the Museum of Natural History.
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| Tell me this isn't a nice building. |
The Museum of Natural History semi-recently moved from their old building into the new Biological Sciences building. The main exhibits opened in April, and the remaining exhibits will open in November. I never made it to the natural history museum in their old location, but the new building is nice. Like the art museum, it’s not huge, and can be covered in about an hour. When you enter, you’re greeted by two mastodons. Besides them, the first floor also has a café, a short film about Michigan natural history, an exhibit on time/length scaling, and the planetarium, which costs money. The main exhibit, on the second floor, is Evolution: Life through Time. It’s like a smaller version of the Museum of the Earth in Ithaca, and the Field Museum in Chicago also has a similar exhibit. Basically, you’re walked through lots of fossils and bones that progress from worm-things and trilobites to funny-looking fish to dinosaurs to chickens and walruses. It’s not as extensive as either the Museum of the Earth or the Field Museum, but it’s still well done. Right now, the only other things on the second floor are a bunch of rocks and minerals [there are some pretty cool ones – petrified wood, the minerals that are different colors depending on their impurities, fulgurite (it’s formed by lightning)] and just your friendly neighborhood Quetzalcoatlus.
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| Mastodons at the entrance |
Following our afternoon enjoying the free air conditioning, we headed back off campus to the Main Street/downtown Ann Arbor area for dinner. We ate at Frita Batidos, my first time there since moving to Ann Arbor. They serve Cuban-inspired burgers (fritas) and milkshakes (batidos). The milkshakes are really good (particularly with rum – yes, that’s an option), but to spare my stomach and wallet, I only ordered a chorizo frita this time (no churros either).
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| Quetzalcoatlus |
Our last activity for the day was an escape room, the one request for an activity I got, besides eating, which we did plenty of as well. I’d never done an escape room, but I do have a slight puzzle solving compulsion, so I was definitely interested. The goal in the room we did was to escape from a desert island, which we did with some minutes left. We did end up getting a couple clues, one to start us off and one because something we thought should open wouldn’t open but it turns out it did open after all. Overall, I thought the room was well-designed. The puzzles made sense and didn’t require any “of course you should have known to stand on your head and spin around three times to make the palm tree start talking” logic. Would recommend if you like puzzles. And that wrapped up day one. Stay tuned for the rest of the weekend.
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