Back in March 2011, when I was responsible for a polar expedition company, I was invited to the Seatrade Cruise Global tradeshow in Miami. I presented about the exciting growth of expedition and small ship cruising. That day, I made a joke about “maybe at some point, we will offer cruises to the sewers of Detroit”. A bad joke following my bad Dutch sense of humor.
Little I knew that a bit more than seven years later, I would stand on a small cruise ship, entering the port of Detroit. This time, not to discover the sewers, but the many cultural highlights of this city of revival.
For Victory Cruise Lines, Detroit has become a major port. First, as a stop on Victory I’s cruises between Chicago and Toronto, but also now as a main departure port for the Victory II. When sailing into the port of Detroit, you immediately see the attractive waterside with the majestically Renaissance building. A highlight of our one-day stop was for me the Henry Ford Museum of Innovation, which is so much more than a museum about cars and is one of the top three museums I visited in my life.
City of Hope
For me, Detroit is a city of hope. There is hardly any other city in the world that experienced such a big drop in population from 1.8 million in the 1950’s to 700,000 now, including the many social issues that were related to this decline. But if a city can come back from such a big catastrophic fall, completely renew as a cultural highlight, and even get rewarded with “City of Design” by UNESCO (the first US city to receive this designation), it shows the capabilities of us humans to be able to change something for the better.
So, I must apologize to Detroit for my ignorant joke from 2011. In line with the song from the famous Dutch DJ Fedde Le Grand, two times will from now “put my hands up 4 Detroit”.
Learn more about the Victory Cruise Lines sailing dates in Detroit. Cruise with us and discover the new renaissance of the Motor City.
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