Detroit, Michigan

From Chicago it was onto Detroit. Detroit is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan and is a major port city on the Detroit River, in the Midwest region of the United States. Located north of Windsor, Ontario, Detroit is the only major U.S. city that looks south to Canada. It was founded on July 24, 1701, by the Frenchman Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac and its name originates from the French word détroit for strait, characterising its location on the river connecting the Great Lakes.

Known as the world's traditional automotive center, "Detroit" is a metonym for the American automobile industry and an important source of popular music legacies celebrated by the city's two familiar nicknames, the Motor City and Motown. We were able to see General Motors HQ located on the waterfront.

In 2008, Detroit ranked as the United States' eleventh most populous city, with 912,062 residents. At its peak in 1950, the city was the fourth-largest in the USA, but has since seen a major shift in its population to the suburbs.

We stopped off here for two nights as this is one of the U.S. gateways to Canada and our next destination was Toronto. Colin was not too keen on the idea, as you know Detroit doesn't have a friendly reputation as its renowned for gangsters, drive-by shootings and the crime rate is very high in general. In addition to this he was further put off when we researched hotels as many of the reviews stated the hotels locations were in very rough areas and the hotel we decided to book had reviews saying receptionist is behind bullet proof glass and they had underwear vending machines which didn't paint the best picture to help my case and get him to go. All that aside we went ahead with this hotel and arrived in Detroit at 8pm on a Friday night and walked in the rain from the bus station to our hotel, luckily it was a 5 minute walk. The hotel was exactly as described but it seemed ok and we found it secure as all entrances were key card access only. We spent that night getting settled in and headed out early the next morning to have a walk about in the nice crap weather (similar to back home without the snow!!!)

We walked through city center and found it to be a ghost town as it was a Sunday morning and were surprised to actually see someone who said hello and couldn't have been nicer. Although we did feel a little out of place as our clothes fitted us whereas every one elses were baggy and 3 sizes too big for them, hip-hop style! We wandered down to the river front and walked along there pausing for a few photos and looking over the river onto Canada (which looks no different from the U.S) where we got a preview of our next country we would visit.

We had read about a nice park island that we wanted to go to but the weather was cold and windy and was starting to rain, when we realised the park was another 3 miles along we decided to just walk along the river then head back to the hotel as we are no longer used to crap weather! On the way back to the hotel we went into Subway for lunch and were amused to see even thicker bullet proof glass than our hotel reception. To pay we had to hand money over the counter just like the way you do in a bank, then our sandwich was put in a wee turnstile thing. We were thinking some places in Glasgow could probably do with this although it was kind of stupid as at the top of the bullet proof glass there was a large space with bars across it so if you really wanted to shoot the guy for a free sandwich you could have just jumped up there to aim the gun through the big open space.

Overall we found Detroit to be no where near as rough as we had thought although this is probably because we weren't there for long and were in a quiet area. As well as that, it was raining and a Sunday so that must of reduced the drive by shooters!