Walking in a Winter Wonderland

Hello from Michigan!

Yes, I have arrived safe and sound in Michigan, after a rather gruelling trip from NYC on Greyhound. I spent half of Saturday browsing around the area close to my hotel in NYC, doing a little Christmas shopping, a little hot chocolate drinking, a little bookstore browsing. Lugged my stuff all to the Port Authority Greyhound station about 2pm (thankfully I was helped to get a taxi from the hotel by Carlos from my hotel's lovely wife, sadly I never found out her name) and then lined up for almost 2 hours to get on my bus to Toledo.

Once on the bus, the driver told us that he would only take us as far as Cleveland, where a connecting bus would meet us. That's ok, at least I was going in the right direction! Got to Cleveland at 1am... and then discovered that I had almost 3 hours of layover there until my connecting bus to Toledo. So yes, as many of you back home who got my text messages will know, I spent three hours sitting on the floor of Cleveland Greyhound station, on my towel, in line for the next bus! Just how I love to spend the wee small hours of the morning.

But eventually I was on the bus to Toledo, I slept the whole way and then got off with low trauma, and only had to wait about 10 minutes for Terri and Dan to make it from Dearborn, MI, as the bus was a little early. They picked me up and took me back to their house here in Dearborn, where I could finally have a shower, and we just chilled for a bit until it was time to head out for some breakfast and face the day!

Went to Bob Evans for breakfast. I experienced a Bob Evans restaurant in Florida and liked it - good home style cooking for a good price, but their breakfasts are even better! Huge, like everything else in the US, and delicious. I felt so much better after that shower and a feed.

We then went out towards Frankenmuth, a town with a lot of German history, that is all Bavarian feel. Very much a tourist place, but awesome fun, particularly at Christmas. We stopped at an outlet mall on the way, and of course, I shopped! Two of my favourite stores, Bath and Body Works and Lane Bryant. REALLY cheap stuff.

Once at Frankenmuth, we stopped at Bronners Christmas Store. This is a massive, MASSIVE store entirely devoted to Christmas. You name the Christmassy thing, you will find it at Bronners. I can imagine it's pretty weird to go there at any other time of the year, but on the 23rd of December it was awesome fun. Except for the Christmas carol karaoke. There's only one thing worse than regular karaoke, and that's Christmas carol karaoke!

From there we went into Frankenmuth itself. It's a gorgeous town, all Bavarian style shops and restaurants. It was SO cold yesterday though - very, very windy and snowing on and off. I loved every minute of it, even if it was a bit of hard work keeping warm enough when we were outside. You will see photos later of me in my daggy hat, gloves and scarf.

Browsed shops and then had a late lunch of a half sandwich and soup with hot chocolate, and then browsed some more (trying to keep out of the cold outside) until it was time to take up our reservations at Zehnders famous chicken restaurant. YUMMO!! We had their buffet dinner and it was so good. I can see why their chicken is famous, it's fried chicken that isn't greasy or heavy or overly salty. It's just good! Particularly with bucketloads of mashed potatoes and gravy!

Drove around Frankenmuth then to look at the beautiful Christmas lights all through the town, and then headed back to Dan and Terri's house. I didn't last long before I was asleep (considering I'd had about 3 hours sleep in the past day and a half, I was doing pretty well!) and apparently they even stopped off at Terri's Dad's house on the way home and I didn't even wake up!

This morning I have woken to find more snow outside on the ground, it's just gorgeous. So special for Christmas Eve!

Merry Christmas Everyone!