Vaughan to Ann Arbor: the University of Michigan weekend by chauffeured car

Ann Arbor, the campus and the Big House

Ann Arbor is the University of Michigan and the town the university made: forty-five thousand students on a campus that fills the town's centre — the Diag, the Law Quad's Gothic courtyard, the Michigan Union, the Ross School's glass — with Michigan Stadium, the largest in the country at a hundred and seven thousand seats, filling on seven autumn Saturdays with a crowd larger than the town; Zingerman's Delicatessen on Detroit Street, the sandwich shop that became a food empire and a business-school case study; Main Street's restaurants and Kerrytown's market and shops; and, for the children, the Hands-On Museum and the university's Museum of Natural History with its dinosaurs and planetarium. Vaughan families with a Grade 12 student who has Michigan on the list — a public university with an Ivy League's reputation and an international student body that includes Ontario's — book the visit weekend; Vaughan football families book a Wolverines Saturday; and every Chicago trip on this site stops here for lunch. The Destination Ann Arbor site has the town; the border guide has the Ambassador Bridge.

The road

From Thornhill the 407 and the 401 to Windsor in three and three-quarter hours, the Ambassador Bridge or the tunnel with the wait checked, I-75 south through Detroit's downtown and I-94 west past the airport and the Willow Run exit to Ann Arbor's State Street exit — five and a half hours by the estimate and five and three-quarters with the booth. The SUV carries a family of four for the visit; the Sprinter carries a group of eight for the game; Detroit is forty minutes back for a family that pairs the two.

The university visit

Michigan's Office of Undergraduate Admissions runs the information session and the student-led walking tour from the Campus Information Center in the Michigan Union — the Diag, the Law Quad, the libraries, a residence hall, the engineering campus on North Campus by bus — booked on the admissions visit page weeks ahead; the Ross School and the engineering college run their own sessions for a student with a programme in mind. A Vaughan family's morning is the session at ten and the tour at eleven, lunch at Zingerman's, and the afternoon's own walk — the Museum of Art's free galleries on State Street, the Nichols Arboretum's Huron River paths, the Big House's open gates for the photograph on the field's edge — with the SUV between the central and North campuses, which a family car does by the university's bus.

The Big House, on a football Saturday

Michigan Stadium's Saturdays are the largest crowds in American sport — a hundred and seven thousand in a bowl sunk into the ground so that the field is below street level and the stadium seems small from outside until the family is inside it — and a Vaughan group of eight books one as the autumn weekend: the tickets through the athletics site's resale or a season-ticket holder's, the tailgate on the golf course across Stadium Boulevard with the Sprinter parked beside the group, the band's march from Revelli Hall, the noon or 3:30 kickoff, and the town's Main Street after. The Ohio State game in the even years and the Michigan State game are the ones that sell out in the summer; a September non-conference Saturday is bookable a month out and the same stadium.

Zingerman's, Main Street and Kerrytown

Zingerman's Delicatessen on Detroit Street — the Reuben, the corned beef, the bread from its own bakehouse, the cheese counter, the queue out the door on a Saturday — is the lunch every Vaughan visitor is told to have and is worth the wait; Zingerman's Roadhouse on the west side and the Bakehouse's tours are the empire's other stops. Main Street's four blocks hold the town's restaurants (the Chop House, Frita Batidos, Sava's), Kerrytown's Farmers Market on Saturday mornings and the shops around it, the Nickels Arcade off State Street and the bookstores that a college town keeps; the Michigan Theater's 1928 auditorium and the Ark's folk club are the evening.

The children's Ann Arbor

The Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum on Huron Street is four floors of exhibits the under-tens run through; the university's Museum of Natural History in the Biological Sciences Building has the dinosaurs, the planetarium and the mastodons dug from Michigan's farms; the Nichols Arboretum's peony garden in late May is the walk; Gallup Park's canoe rentals on the Huron are the summer hour; and Domino's Farms' petting farm on the town's edge is the toddlers'. A family with a Grade 12 student and a seven-year-old divides the Saturday between the tour and the Hands-On Museum, with the SUV doing the two drops.

The weekend, in shape

Friday at 11 from Thornhill, Windsor's bridge at 2:50, Ann Arbor's hotel — the Graduate on Huron or the Bell Tower on the campus's edge — by 4:15, Main Street's dinner; Saturday the admissions session at ten and the tour at eleven, Zingerman's at 12:30, the Museum of Art and the Arboretum, or the Big House if it is a home Saturday; Sunday Kerrytown's brunch, the Hands-On Museum for the younger one, the SUV at noon, Detroit's tunnel at 1 with the 48-hour exemption on the Zingerman's bag, the 401 with the student asleep, Thornhill by 5:30. Two nights, the SUV as a return with a Saturday on daily hire, one number in the booking engine, and the travel desk holding the hotel — which on a football Saturday books in the summer at double the rate.

What the chauffeur replaces

Four hours of the 401 each way; the Ambassador Bridge as the driver; I-94 through Detroit's western suburbs; the campus's parking during a tour, which does not exist for visitors; the Big House's lots on a game day, where a Sprinter with a pass parks and a family car circles; and the Sunday's drive home with a Grade 12 student asleep. For a couple the trip is a car's; for a family of four with an admissions weekend or a group of eight for a Wolverines Saturday it is one fare.

Seasons

September to November for the football Saturdays; October for the campus's colour and the fall visit days; March and April for the admitted-students' weekends; late May for the Arboretum's peonies; July for the Ann Arbor Art Fair, which fills the town's streets for four days; summer for the campus quiet and the tours running. Michigan's winter on I-94 is the chauffeur's care.

Pairing it

Ann Arbor pairs with Detroit forty minutes east for the Henry Ford and a game, with Chicago as the lunch stop on the road west, and with the Windsor post for the Canadian side of the bridge; a family with Michigan and Cornell both on the list does two weekends.

The football Saturday, in order, for a group of eight

Eight friends from Woodbridge for a September noon kickoff: the Sprinter at 5 a.m. Saturday — or the Friday night before with an Ann Arbor hotel booked in June — the Ambassador Bridge at 8:40 with the game-day traffic, I-94, the golf course's tailgate lot at 9:45 with the pass bought in August and the Sprinter parked beside the group's tables; the band's march to the stadium at 11:15; the seats at 11:45 for the team's run under the banner; the game; the Main Street bars at four; the Sprinter at eight, the tunnel at 8:45, the 401 with the group asleep from London, Woodbridge by 12:30 — or the hotel and Sunday's Zingerman's. Sixteen hours of daily hire split eight ways, and the athletics site for the tickets and the parking.

The North Campus and the engineering visit

Michigan's College of Engineering sits on North Campus across the Huron River — the Duderstadt Center, the Ford robotics building, the Lurie Tower — and a Grade 12 student with engineering on the list does the college's own information session there after the central campus tour, with the Sprinter driving the two miles between rather than the university's Blue Bus; the School of Music, Theatre & Dance and the Stamps School of Art are on North Campus too, and the admissions visit page lists the colleges' sessions separately.

Costs, plainly

The Ann Arbor weekend is a return with a Saturday on daily hire in the booking engine; the tours are free, the hotel — double the rate on a football Saturday — and the game are the family's own, and the 48-hour exemption covers the Zingerman's bag and the M Den's sweatshirts. Against the fare are four hours of the 401 and the bridge each way as a driver, I-94 through Detroit's suburbs, the campus's non-existent visitor parking and the Big House's game-day lots; a couple does it in a car, and a family of four with an admissions weekend or a group of eight for a Wolverines Saturday books the SUV or the Sprinter for one fare.

The Art Fair and the summer version

The Ann Arbor Art Fair in the third week of July closes thirty blocks of the town's streets for four days and a thousand artists' booths — the largest juried art fair in the country by some counts — with the university's campus quiet, the restaurants' patios full and the hotels booked by spring; a Vaughan couple's summer weekend is the fair on Saturday, the Arboretum on Sunday and Zingerman's between, in the SUV as a return; the fair's site has the dates and the map. The Michigan Theater's summer classic-film series and the Top of the Park's free concerts in June are the other summer evenings.

The Michigan Union, the Diag and the traditions

The campus tour's stops carry the university's stories — the brass M in the Diag that students do not step on before their first exam, the Law Quad's reading room modelled on an English college, the Union's steps where Kennedy proposed the Peace Corps in 1960, the Burton Tower's carillon that plays at noon — and a Grade 12 student from Thornhill who has done the tour with a guide from Mississauga hears them from someone who made the same choice; the Michigan Union's Campus Information Center at the tour's start has the map, and the M Den on State Street has the sweatshirt the trip ends with.

Booking it

Book a return from your Vaughan address with a Saturday on daily hire, or a daily hire for the weekend; tell us the tour's time, the game, the hotel, the seats and every passenger's citizenship for the bridge, and the chauffeur confirms the plan the evening before.

Book the Ann Arbor weekend