My family and I just got home from a two-night stay on Mackinac Island in northern Michigan (my lovely home state). If you’ve never heard of Mackinac Island, it’s an island off the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and you can only get there by taking a ferry. Once you’re on the island, which is 8.2 miles around, your only transportation is walking, riding bikes, or taking horse-drawn carriages ~ because there are no cars on the island! Mackinac is mostly a place for tourists, with its peak season in the summer (because they get some hella cold and snowy winters up there), but there are a few hundred people who live there year-round.
During our stay on the island, my family enjoyed some amazing food, beautiful scenery, and fun activities, from taking a carriage tour around the island to exploring all the cute shops downtown. We stayed at the Island House Hotel, which was a lovely experience especially because of the amazing breakfasts they served! It also overlooked the harbor and the lake, so we had a stunning view out our hotel room window (and from the hotel’s front porch).
On Sunday afternoon, we went to afternoon tea at the Grand Hotel ~ which is quite grand. (If you’ve seen the movie “Somewhere in Time,” it was filmed at the Grand Hotel!) It’s absolutely huge, and it has bright, colorful, gaudy carpets and walls and decorations inside. It stands up on a hill and overlooks Lake Huron ~ and you can see it from pretty far away when you’re on the lake or Mackinac Bridge which goes over the lake.
Our afternoon tea experience was lovely: the atmosphere was so elegant and the tea was done so properly that occasionally I would forget I was in Michigan for a fleeting second ~ and would subconsciously think I was in England or something. We enjoyed endless cups of tea and delicious sandwiches and treats to go along with it. I think my favorite treat was the chocolate covered strawberries… oh my goodness.
After tea, we strolled through the Grand Hotel’s gardens and enjoyed all the beautiful flowers!
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