This short drive 70 miles to NorthWest from my place kicked off the long weekend for Thanksgiving 2017.
In 2017, we planned to celebrate Thanksgiving in Michigan as this was the first time I was going to celebrate Thanksgiving here and I had lovely people, Monika & Manju, to celebrate this special festival with. I have started liking Michigan only because of the many people that I have met so far here and the lovely relationships that I have built in the short 3-month period here.
To kick things off, I was looking for a nice spot in Michigan which was not that far and at the same time not too close and Frankenmuth fit the bill perfectly. I used to live in Westland back then and Frankenmuth was roughly 70 miles away from home.
For those of you who haven’t been here, it is a German town near Birch Run shopping outlet. It is an extremely well kept and relaxing place to visit. The best time to visit this place is in Summer and they are famous for their Chicken Diner and Cheese house.
We were visiting during the Thanksgiving break, so it was definitely chilly to say the least. This was the first time I was visiting this place, so had an open mind and was ready to embrace whatever this place had to offer.
The drive to this place was quite peaceful and enjoyable. The only thing that went wrong was that I missed an exit while traveling here and had to drive 4 miles more to get back on the correct track. During this time, I had gotten my driver’s license only for a couple weeks, so I was still not well versed with the way Google Maps worked and that was the reason I missed that exit. Looking back at it, it sounds both funny and weird, and has stuck with me for these past days.
Reaching Frankenmuth was itself a big thing for me as it was the first time I was driving a long distance after getting my driver’s license. When we were planning a trip here, I didn’t know about the Bronner’s Christmas store and was blown away by the beauty and grandeur of it.
I realized it was truly a German styled village in Michigan. As soon as we entered the main street, we were greeted with the Thanksgiving and Christmas decoration and loved the different attractions that they had put together as a part of these decorations. It gave us real German feels just seeing different buildings and store staff dressed in traditional German clothes.
After parking the car, it was time to take stroll through the streets of Frankenmuth and experience different food and places to visit. The first thing we did was to go to the famous Chicken Diners. This was the first food place that I wanted to try as we were starving for our lunch. The catalyst for us to visit this place was the traditional German dress that the staff was wearing. It made us really curious how the place looked from the inside and how the food tasted their. Turned out, it was too much food for two people to handle, but we somehow managed to devour it as we were hungry and the food turned out to be quite tasty.
Post lunch, it was time explore the chocolate shops, the fudge stores, and the famous cheese place that Frankenmuth had to offer. We spent considerable time at the cheese place as I was both curious and cheese is something that I really like to taste. Post touring the cheese place, we clicked a few pictures by the famous cheese mouse statute that they have outside the store, which acts as an attraction for tourists to come inside the store and check it out.
After the cheese place, the next stop was at the Frankenmuth winery. I had heard a lot about the wine tasting at Frankenmuth and frankly, having never done it, I was extremely curious to find out how it goes, so there we were, sipping different kinds of wines and enjoying the moment. After a round of almost 5-10 different types of wines, we liked a couple and ordered those to go. I was an ardent fan of the alcoholic beverages back then, so buying those wine bottles was a no-brainer decision for me.
Now, as I talked at the beginning of this post, we did see the Bronner’s store while heading to Frankenmuth, so it was fitting that we would check this place out on our way home. And, I was so glad that we did. I wouldn’t have believed in my wildest dreams that this place would really be that big and would really turn out to be the biggest Christmas shop on the planet.
Frankly, I was quite overwhelmed. There were so many things to check out and so many attractions put there that I couldn’t decide and buy anything. Even after spending a good part of an hour in that store, I didn’t go for anything to buy for decorating my apartment. The best we could do was check out all the amazing things that the store had to offer, click hundreds of pictures to show to friends and family back home and experience something that we would hardly get to do.
In summary, this visit and day turned out to be a perfect getaway from the busy work life and I was glad that I got to do it.
Next stop: Chicago, Illinois.
stochasticity 
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