Facing down the end of the year, I’ve admitted defeat on numerous fronts lately.
- I’ve emptied almost an entire bookcase of books that I probably won’t read or read again, and donated the ones in decent enough condition to donate.
- I’ve closed a bunch of the over 80 (!) tabs I’ve had open on my phone (most of them for months), and will be closing at least another 15 after this post.
- I just quit the two open browsers on my sadly neglected MacBook and put paid to all their open tabs, too.
However, I have NOT given up on blogging! So, although I should be catching up on holiday prep after being sick with a cold this week, here I am with my Sunday Salon post about celebrating the Day of the Dead at the end of October. It has been almost two months since my last post!
To be fair, I have been busy with work and other things and was sick twice during that time, but still…two months! It seems kind of silly to post this now, so long after the fact, but I guess this post is like mental decluttering, since it’s been on my mental to-do list all this time!
FIrst, we traveled to a suburb of Detroit, Michigan for a line dance event with the theme of Day of the Dead. We didn’t dress up for the theme, but some people went all out with the costumes for Saturday night.
Then we had a day of sightseeing in the Detroit neighborhood of Mexicantown, which is so far north it sits right on the border with Canada.
I found this blog post to be great preparation for our visit: 10 Tips for Enjoying a Visit to Mexicantown. We only had one afternoon there, but hope we can go again next year!
First stop in Mexicantown was lunch at Armando’s, a longstanding Mexican restaurant, though it’s not the oldest one. (Those honors go to Mexican Village.)
For an appetizer, we shared the house specialty, botana, which we found to be a much healthier nachos-style dish than the Tex-Mex version we’re used to.
I had posole for my lunch entree. Delicious! And, of course, we had to try Armando’s famous margaritas on special for $5, but we didn’t get a second one to go since we had a rental car!
After lunch we walked around Mexicantown. There were a lot of colorful buildings and painted murals and sights to see.
We saw a lot of Day of the Dead decorations and Mexican flags everywhere.
The Ambassador Bridge between the U.S. and Canada is so close to the neighborhood that the Welcome Center is right there for people coming into the country from Canada. We were there on a Sunday, and the Welcome Center didn’t appear to be open.
We took pictures of the Ambassador Bridge in the distance, and were very careful when leaving the neighborhood on our way to the airport not to go the wrong way and end up on the road to Canada!
Before leaving the neighborhood, we walked across the Bagley Pedestrian Bridge over I-75, and interstate highway which went right through the neighborhood when it was put in. The pedestrian bridge was built in 2010, and was the first cable-stayed span to be completed in the state. The chain-link fences all along the bridge are covered with “love locks”.
It was a very pleasant place to visit and a great spot to celebrate the Day of the Dead. Sadly, according to this recent article in Preservation, the now walkable neighborhood is becoming more desirable for its proximity to the city, and locals are starting to be priced out of housing there. Learn more about Mexicantown and its history in Detroit at Mexicantown.com.
If you’re looking for books set in Detroit that include Mexicantown, I recommend the August Snow books by Stephen Mack Jones.
I still have a lot of decluttering (actual and mental) left to do in 2025. I have to go through and organize photos, deleting zillions of bad ones and unnecessary duplicates. I have to clear off my desk – so cluttered with piles now as to be unusable. I’m considering deleting my Twitter and Instagram accounts, since I hardly ever go on either platform. I need to delete unused stuff on my struggling old laptop and clear out actual file drawers in my house. But that’s all for the New Year’s Resolution post, and I haven’t posted any November or December posts yet!
Sunday Salon is to encourage conversations about books and book-ish things. The weekly link-up and Facebook group are hosted by Deb Nance of Readerbuzz. Sunday Salon has a long history in the book blogging community as, luckily, other bloggers are much more regular about posting and participating than I am.