Playing Tour Guide in Grand Rapids

Last week I got to play tour guide when my grandparents and two of their friends came to visit Grand Rapids! I had such a great time that I think I could make a part-time career out of it ;)

The first thing we did when they arrived in town was head out to Grand Valley State University in Allendale, about a 20 minute drive from our house, to check out the campus. Our family friend's daughter is thinking about attending GVSU and they wanted to see the the library their daughter raved about. Side note: I am currently writing this post at that library, because we lost power at 4am and it hasn't come back yet! The library is impressive and if my classes were in Allendale I'm sure I would've spent a lot of time there.

From there we headed to lunch at The Twisted Rooster, which is an awesome local restaurant that features local ingredients! Next up was the Fredrick Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park. We spent all afternoon walking through the gardens. Everyone was really impressed, especially with the new Japanese Garden. I will write a separate post on the gardens soon! 

My Grandpa practicing his Tai-Chi moves lol

We left the gardens right before closing and headed to dinner at Rockwell-Republic. Despite it being one of mine and Thomas' favorite restaurants, they have an amazing happy hour!, our visitors weren't too fond of the "out there" menu. Everyone ordered the Turkey Club and enjoyed it, but they felt that was their only option. So unless you have adventurous visitors I'd take them somewhere else. At this point they were tired from all of the walking so we dropped them off at their hotel for the night.

We met up again the next morning bright and early for breakfast at San Chez, another awesome local ingredient tapas restaurant right downtown. Everyone loved their light breakfast.

Our next stop was the newly renovated Gerald R. Ford Museum, which had just reopened that week! President Ford was from Grand Rapids and is now buried here, along with his wife Betty, outside of the museum. This was my first time walking through and for being a Presidential museum (two things I don't really have any interest in...) it was pretty enjoyable. My grandparents had been before and said the renovation made a huge difference.

A piece of the Berlin wall

Our last stop of the trip was for lunch at Slows BarBQ in the Downtown Market. Slows never disappoints! All of our visitors got The Reason sandwich, which has pulled pork and coleslaw. My grandparents' friend, who had never been to Slows before, said it was the best sandwich he's ever had in his life! As always, Thomas and I split the mound of pulled pork, each got a mac-n-cheese, and T got his sweet potato mash. It was all so delicious!

 Grandma with The Reason!

And with that, our visitors hit the road back to Metro Detroit! I had such an awesome time showing them around our city, which is quickly becoming one of our favorite places in the world, and can't wait to do it again in a couple weeks when my grandparents bring my great-grandpa in for a visit :)