If you have to be away from home for two weeks for work, the last thing you want to do is live out of a hotel room. Lucky for me and my merry team of fellow tv'ers, we got to stay in a totally cute inn that feels like a real home. We took over the place and turned it into our yarn dorm - every night we burned the midnight oil in the house's cozy living room, painting each others toe nails and telling ghost stories... I mean, frantically knitting, crocheting, and preparing till we were bleary-eyed and stupid.

But, still, we could take it, because we were here:


And these were our neighbors:



... amazing, right? These beautiful houses were home to the fancy people of Detroit back in the day. People like vice presidents of car companies and other high-society folks. This block is right off Woodward Avenue, the first paved road in the country. Just think - the first paved road, smack dab in the middle of the automobile capital of the country - that must have been a pretty hot place to be. Driving a horseless carriage up that smooth, sweet pavement must have been the equivalent of taking your private jet to South Beach just for dinner.

But before you think we were living it up in the lap of luxury these past two weeks, I'll show you what was literally right around the corner from us:





Detroit is so strange in this way, amazing old perfectly-preserved buildings are right next to bombed-out mansions and empty lots. The whole place has an fallen-empire vibe. It was once sooo wealthy and opulent, and now large chunks of it are just deserted. And while there seems to be an urban renaissance happening, it's sprinkled all willy-nilly, so that now a gourmet grocery store is next to rows of abandoned houses, and renovated yuppie lofts are next to tattered, empty lots. Sadly, even the TV studio where we shoot is moving out to the 'burbs, and next time we're in town we'll probably live at the Marriott out by the airport or something. ugh.

But who can't love a place where building lobbies have ceilings like this, just because back then they could:



And office buildings with names like Cadillac Place have things like this just hanging out in the lobby:


Unfortunately I really didn't get to explore Detroit at all. You just know it's a place full of hidden treasures - hopefully I'll get time to do more next time I'm there. I mean, just think what the vintage shopping must be like...