I left Laura's parents' house yesterday morning and headed down to the northern edge of Detroit. First on the schedule was a mansion called Meadowbrook Hall. It was built in the 1930's by a woman and her second husband. She had inherited much of the Dodge motors fortune from her first husband when he passed away, so the mansion was quite extravagant. Upon her death, she donated the house and grounds to Michigan state university, which then spun off this campus to be Oakland university. Pictures went allowed in the house, but I got some from outside. The house has a grand ballroom, game room, dining room, breakfast room, fountain-centered receiving room, beautiful library, an organ, a solarium, a huge drawing room, and many beautiful bedrooms. Her two children from her first marriage each had their own wing that has its own guest room. It was a beautiful house. Because our tour group was small, our guide even let us into rooms that are normally roped off, like into the son's bedroom so we could see the window into the room from his loft play room and into a unique bathroom off of one of the guest rooms. It was a great tour.
Immediately after the tour completed, I had to dart out of there in order to drive to a movie theater that was showing Before Midnight at 1:15. I got there just partway into the first preview. As I mentioned the other day, I was really really looking forward to this movie. I think I need to see it again. Spoilers in this paragraph if you want to skip it. Number one, I think I want to see it again. It's very dense with all the dialogue. I like the evolution of the characters. They are obviously still themselves, but they've grown over the past 9 years. Now, I liked it. A lot. But it left me feeling so ambivalent, which I guess is kinda the point. But it wasn't as satisfying as the other two for me. Maybe it's because I don't identify with it as much as the other 2. I don't know what it's like to be in a long term relationship and have to navigate the course of the two parties' individual evolutions. I don't know what it's like to know exactly what buttons you can press in order to elicit a specific response. I don't know what it's like to have a knock down, drag out fight with someone you love. So a lot of the movie made me uncomfortable with what they were saying to each other and how they were saying it. It definitely wasn't as easy a movie as either of the first two. All of that being said, I'd absolutely recommend it and will likely be watching it again soon.
Ok, so after the movie, all I had was a 4 hour drive (including another border crossing) over to Toronto. I'm staying with one of my cruise girlfriends here. We went out to dinners last night before I crashed hard. Amazing how a long day of driving can wear one out.
Now, today. I got done about 2/3 of what I had planned for today. I blame the weather and really enjoying the first 3 events for me not making the other 2 events. So, the 3 events that I did make it to - all historic houses. Yay! First house was Casa Loma, definitely the most extravagant of the 3. It's actually kind of similar to the Hearst mansion that I went to in San Simeon. It's a big tourist attraction here in Toronto. A number of the rooms, the largest ones, in fact, do not have any furniture in them. The owner of the house went bankrupt with the stock market crash and ended up having to sell off most of his possessions to pay his debts. He actually was almost penniless at the end of his life. The price of admission includes a self guided audio tour, which is a good way to see the house and grounds at your own pace. I skipped over a lot of the exhibits that had nothing to do with the house, but listened more in depth to the items about the servants and the architecture of the house. The only issues were that there were a lot of people there, many of whom had no sense of appropriate flow of people (they would butt right in front of me when trying to get in to see a specific room, rather than waiting, as I was doing, to let the mass of people ahead of us out), and the humidity - the house obviously didn't have any air conditioning, so it was kind of warm, but more than anything, it was crazy humid. The map in my hand was deteriorating every time I touched it.
I then went right next door to the Spadina house, which was built years earlier than Casa Loma, but has been restored to the 1920's era. It is significantly smaller, but was still considered an upper class home. While Casa Loma employed about 40 servants, Spadina House employed 6. Most of the furniture in this house is original. The family lived in this house up until 1982. When the house originally opened to the public, they had decorated each room in the style from a different era, from the 1860's when the house was purchased, up until the early 1980's when the family moved out. In 2010, they closed the house, and restored the whole house to the 1920's era, since they had such extensive records from that time.
I made a quick stop for lunch at a coffee house that serves Indian food, odd combination, but good food, and then made my way downtown to the MacKenzie house. William Mackenzie was a mayor of Toronto, who later went on to an attempt to overthrow the Canadian government. The attempt was thwarted after just 5 days and he fled to America. He was later cleared of charges related to the attempted overthrow and returned to Toronto. This house was the house that he lived in at that point with his wife and a few of his children. As opposed to the other 2 houses, this house was a distinctly middle class home. He and his wife only employed one servant and there are only 2 rooms I the house where the family would entertain guests. On my tour, it was just me and one other woman, so we got a really intimate tour experience, asking a ton of specialized questions and getting really interesting information. William was also a newspaper man, so there was a reproduction of his printing factory (that's the wrong word, but I can't think of the right one). They even have an original newspaper from 1866 (not one of his, but still, it was in amazing condition, so it was pretty neat).
I was supposed to do a volksmarch and then go up the CN tower, but I was already about 2 1/2 hours behind schedule and it started raining pretty much right as I got into my car after the Mackenzie house, so I decided instead to just drive around the downtown area. Which was a great idea except that I managed to drive straight into the area where the Blue Jays game had just let out. Now, my understanding is that not a lot of people actually go to Blue Jays games, but still, it's enough to cause a traffic jam. So that was fun, especially in the rain. </sarcasm>
I then came over to the restaurant where I'm meeting Jayne and a few of her friends for dinner. I've been just hanging out here, writing this blog since then. A totally great use of the time I've had. Looking forward to dinner tonight. Tomorrow, back to the states. This has felt like an especially short stop for some reason, but time to move on already.
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