Detroit & Cleveland

Just a quick explanation of the trip before I go into the details.  Basically, I have a goal to see all of the Major League Baseball parks.  Before this trip I had visited 19 of them, and now after this trip I have seen 21.

Anyway, last time I was in Cleveland the Indians were not in town so I was unable to see a game and therefore I was unable to cross Jacobs Field of my list.   Since I have been really interested in seeing Comerica Park in Detroit this summer, I decided to stop in Cleveland on my way there and catch the Indians due to the proximity of the two cities.  So, essentially I spent about a day in Cleveland and two days in Detroit.

Anyway, with that being said I'll get on with a quick summary of my trip.  The first 35 or so pictures in my album are from Cleveland, and the last 130 or so were taken in and around Detroit.  Alright.  First, I'll talk a little about of Cleveland based on the two times I've been there.

As I mentioned previously, I have been to Cleveland once in the past and took in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Museum, which is such a great museum it actually does the impossible and makes Cleveland a worthy tourist destination.  I definitely recommend everybody go to Cleveland at least once for this reason alone, unless of course you have absoultely no interest in pop culture or music.


























Other than the Rock and Roll HOF museum, there's not much else that I can really recommend in Cleveland for tourists.   I actually enjoy just walking around and exploring a new American city no matter how nice or ugly it happens to be, but a lot of people don't really see the value in that which is understandable. 

Overall, I will say that Cleveland is pretty damn ugly.  To be fair I have only spent two days there and have been confined to downtown, so I'm not sure what lies directly outside the city.  I know there are some museums to the east of downtown.   Based on a previous trip, there is a cool area to hang out at night called the Warehouse District, which gets pretty crowded and has a large selection of restaurants and bars.

There are a few nice areas to just walk around the city on a nice day.  The Tower City Center is a pretty nice building architecture-wise.  There is also the Cleveland Mall, which is one of the few places you'll find grass in downtown.   On the lakefront you can walk by the Browns stadium, a science center/museum (which actually pretty cool, at least from the outside at least), and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum.  The lakefront is probably the best area to just hang out during the day.  You also get a nice view of the Cleveland skyline from here.































































As for Jacobs Field I actually liked it quite a bit.  Very nice, cozy atmosphere with good fans.  The area surrounding the ballpark is pretty nice as well.  I definitely enjoyed the game.


























I have yet to go to any Cleveland-exclusive restaurants, so I can't really recommend anything unique in the way of food.  I've been to a place called the Cleveland Chophouse in the Warehouse District that was good, but I came to find out later that it is actually a chain.  I always wanted to go eat at Tommy's outside of downtown Cleveland, which is supposed to be a local staple that was used as a setting in American Splendor, which is a great movie set in Cleveland based on the comic book writer Harvey Pekar.

There is a lot of construction going on in Cleveland right now, and apparently there are a lot of planned projects for improving the downtown area over the next couple of years.  Maybe I'll go back if the city significantly changes, but as of right now I don't really have any desire to go back.    However, liked I said before, everyone should go there once to see the Hall of Fame.