What do you know about Detroit? I knew a city had a strong automobile industry, GM and Ford (Chrysler) has a headquarters here, diverse culture in Detroit influenced some music styles and that few years ago city filed for bankruptcy. Which in my opinion didn’t go far even today. You can sense this while wandering around the downtown. There are tall buildings in the middle of Detroit that are abandoned, people look sad and depressed. I wished I could be teleported back in 1940-50s when the city was booming.

Downtown area has lots of beautiful buildings, lots LOTS of churches and a huge Institute of Arts where I spend most of my time. It was worth it! :) The other thing that I loved was open roof parkades where I could go up and take some downtown skyline photos!

Detroit Institute of Arts(DIA) is a huge museum where I spent 4hours of exploring and wandering around. Sounds crazy but you could easily stay there for a whole day! I’ve seen art from ancient cultures to today’s contemporary art. It felt so good. Just to walk and observe all this. Some galleries were more empty then the other ones so it felt like I am there just by myself :) Didn’t mind that!

In the photo above you can see Mushhushshu-dragon, Symbol of the God Marduk. According to the card next to this mosaic it was made in 604 - 562 BCE.

When I saw these rings at first I could not believe my eyes! These are humongous and done with skills :)

DIA has a huge collection of Diego M. Rivera’s work. The scale of some of his works are really impressive. He was born in Mexico, early in his life went to Spain. This is where he got surrounded by European Art. He is known for showing every day people doing their work. This was a fave thing for Soviet propaganda ‘art’. He got commissioned to paint a mural for Red Army Club in Moscow. Shortly after authorities canceled his contract because D. Rivera got involved in anti-soviet politics. A year later he was expelled from a communist party in Mexico as well. That didn’t really affect his career. He got huge contracts in States and was constantly working artist. To add on top of that had lots of lovers and probably enjoyed his life :)

So this little gothic chapel back in the day which is XVI century (If my memory is not lying) did belong to a wealthy family in Belgium for a private devotion. It was a trendy thing to have your own chapel(!) The image below shows the same chapel on the right side corner. In 1923 the chapel was gifted to DIA and piece by piece taken apart, numbered and put together again. This just blew my mind!

Bye bye Detroit! :)

One Saturday we woke up and realized that something is weird. It’s not a regular Saturday. Our camera bags were lying empty in a closet and alarm did not go off. And!! I’m not trying to memorize bride’s and groom’s names. You know what that means? No wedding on a Saturday :) a little bit awkward but we started to think what we could do. We asked ourselves what regular people do on their day off? Our options were to explore Vancouver downtown, visit some breweries on bikes, maybe go to North Van… Second idea was to try to sneak in to the baseball game and the last one was why not to take bikes into ‘snow white’ and drive to Seattle. Ride bikes there, got to the Crab Pot and do other touristy stuff.

No need to guess which one we picked :) Bikes laying in a car we drove a car south! We found a free parking spot which was like a miracle, because parking is ridiculously expensive :/ Anyway, we decide to make a quick ride to the park which was near where we parked and the first thing we saw - photographer was doing a glamour session for a newly weds :) So we stood there and watch how he was working, made some comments to ourselves and moved on. Seemed quite a boring shoot :O

I was actually surprised how empty downtown in Seattle was! So many lanes for bikes and it seemed like it’s only two of us riding.

We did quite a bit though! Stopped for a sushi, then rode bikes to breweries and gum wall, visited fisherman’s harbour, went to eat seafood and then we decided to go and watch a movie :) oh, and of course we took a ride in a ferris wheel. All this day was so chill. We would decide what we wanna do and would go for it. No particular plan, just ride bikes and explore.

The other thing that stuck to my head was very unique architecture. Vancouver downtown is quite boring with same style buildings, but it’s not the same in Seattle. Maybe it’s just me for the first time visiting Seattle but I really liked what I saw :)

lots of unique sculptures around downtown.

No, I didn’t leave gum on this wall ;P