If you're ever in the Benton Harbour/St. Joseph area, try to steer away from the Caffe Tosi. I'm sure the snotty noisy rich wives with no day jobs sitting around the place enjoy it, but I don't recommend it. They don't cook eggs any way except "steaming" them in an espresso maker (I still don't totally understand this). They will not offer food in any combination other than what they place on their menu. And, the coffee is TERRIBLY watered down. It literally is coffee-flavoured water. Oh, and their definition of cinnamon toast is actually a warmed cinnamon roll. Still trying to wrap my head around that one too.
Long story short: We should have gone to Denny's. McDonald's would have been better than this place.
But the town itself is nice. They have a bunch of themed bears around... and... everything is pristine.
It's so nice, and so clean... it made me wonder about the other half of the "twin cities", Benton Harbor. And, it made me feel guilty for being white. I know that I couldn't live in a town like this... unless I was actually on the Benton Harbor side. There's such an imbalance between these two cities; it's disturbing. The poor, black side, and the rich white side.
Benton Harbor population, 92.4% Black
St. Joseph population, 89.6% White
It surprises me that the rich white folks wouldn't want to sink some of that hard-earned money into fixing up Benton Harbor. It has some beautiful buildings, if only they could be restored and maintained.
We pissed around most of the morning looking for decent breakfast, and taking pics of delapitated buildings. We never found a decent breakfast, but here are a few of the buildings we saw along the way:
This one has to be my favourite. If anyone knows the name of this hotel, please let me know!
I think I'd like to visit again someday. There were a lot of buildings we didn't get to see, mostly because we should have been leaving by 9:00am at the latest to get home in time... as it was, I think it was about 10:30 by the time we got onto the Interstate! If anyone wants to come along... or drive... I'll go with! I'm sure there's a lot more to be seen here.
And although we felt a bit safer here on the second day... in the daylight... on a relatively quiet Monday morning... we were quickly reminded that it's not always a nice quiet town:
That's a stop sign on a side street along Pipestone Rd, if I remember correctly.
A cop car drove by and gave us a bit of an odd look while we were taking a close look at the holes in the sign. They didn't slow down much, and I honestly expected them to turn around and ask us what the hell we were doing... but it never happened. :)
So, we were on our way again. A little more delirium... a little bit of rain along the way... being that we left so late, we didn't really want to stop if we didn't absolutely have to. The hunger was starting to set in. We were literally going bananas... mmmm... bananas. Pretty soon, we found salvation (no, not another Jesus sign). The only thing that would bring a smile to any Canadian travelling in the US: Tim Hortons!
Can't remember where exactly in Michigan this one was, but it couldn't have come at a better time. We had some food... had some coffee... and realized that a Large coffee in Canada is a Medium coffee in the US. I think with exchange the price was pretty close, but I was more interested in getting some caffeine in my sytem than doing math in my head. :)
One thing though: If this comes to Canada, I'm seriously considering switching to Starbucks or something:
Gross!!
It gave me flashbacks to way back when the McGriddle came out and I thought to myself, "How bad could that be?". ***SHUDDER***
After our Timmie's stop, we were back on the road. Stopped in at a Canadian Tim Horton's along the way (somehow, it just seemed different here... it seemed... more normal).
Soon enough, when all the cars around us on the Freewa- er, um, Highway started to change from domestics to lowered Civics with oversized mufflers... we knew we were home. :D
For anyone who's looking to see more (or all) of the vacation pictures (ahem: Lucyfer)... I'm going to post them all online, rather than emailing them out - the files are just too damn big for email!
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