To Plan A Trip

Contact the Grand Rapids/Kent County Convention & Visitors Bureau ( www.visitgrandrapids.org ) for more information on the city and some appealing towns within an hour’s drive. Among these are Saugatuck, a 100-year-old art colony on the Kalamazoo River, and Holland, whose name proclaims the ancestry of its first citizens. Founded in 1847, Holland has a fine small museum to tell its story and a thriving downtown of shops and restaurants. Windmill Island, nearby, has the only real, working Dutch windmill in the United States.

Back in Grand Rapids, don’t miss the Gerald Ford Museum. There you’ll find the turbulence that made Ford’s presidential term fascinating, brief though it was: Watergate, Vietnam War resistance, the fall of Saigon. Also, allow time for Heritage Hill, one of the largest urban historic districts in the nation. The survival of 1,300 houses representing more than 60 architectural styles is a testament to strong-willed preservationists of the late 1960s. You can eat well in Grand Rapids. The Pantlind’s 1913 Room is the only AAA Five Diamond Restaurant in Michigan. San Chez, which bills itself as a tapas bistro, has delicious offerings. The BOB, standing for Big Old Building, is a four-story brick structure that started life in 1903 as a grocery warehouse and was saved from demolition by a local restaurateur. Now it’s the popular home to six restaurants, a microbrewery, a jazz club, and more. Grand Rapids still has plenty of ginger.