Craft vacation 'round beer tour
CHEERS | There's nothing wooden about busy Holland, Mich.
July 19, 2009
BY JESSICA SEDGWICK jsedgwick@suntimes.com
HOLLAND, Mich. -- I was a little surprised when my husband suggested Holland, Mich., a town known for its Dutch ancestry and attractions, for our anniversary trip this year. I didn't really see him as the wooden shoe demonstration type. After he admitted the real reason he wanted to go there -- to see where one of his favorite craft beers, the Mad Hatter, is made -- I did a little research and discovered a few other enticements: a downtown peppered with shops and galleries, restaurants that rely on local Michigan produce, plenty of hiking, and a "green" hotel that looked sleek, modern and actually affordable.So while many people think of tulips and Dutch villages when they think of Holland, here are a few other reasons to make the three-hour drive from Chicago:
No wooden shoes allowed
The City Flats Hotel is the first in the Midwest to achieve LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold Certification. I didn't know what that was either. Suffice to say that LEED gives the "OK" that a building project is environmentally responsible.A nice alternative to your typical B&B (a $120-a-night rate is $30 cheaper than the local bed and breakfast), City Flats Hotel has a surprisingly urban sensibility."It's a European feel," said general manager Dave Wilsey. "It's like something in downtown Chicago, right here in Holland." Opened in 2008, City Flats proves that green living can be insanely stylish. Since carpet uses electricity to clean, for example, the hotel uses beautiful all-natural cork floors. The decor is sparse -- the beautiful bedding, bold paint colors and 40-inch flat-screen TVs are about as gussied up as the rooms get.
In fact, staying at City Flats felt a little like staying in a warehouse, and it still had that "new construction" smell. But the spartan decor didn't detract from our comfort. The soft mattresses and organic cotton sheets made it difficult to get out of bed.
The modern four-story hotel looks a little out of place as it towers over the rest of the cobblestone downtown. While it might be a strange fit for such a traditional town, Wilsey said, people seem to have embraced it. "The classic example is during the Tulip Festival in May," Wilsey said. "We asked people not to use their wooden shoes inside to protect the floors. We had piles of wooden shoes outside the door."
Nature vs. nature
Hikers have plenty of options around Holland: two nature centers, a state park and a path along the beach with a historic lighthouse. We chose the Outdoor Discovery Center, a nonprofit nature preserve with more than four miles of trails and boardwalks winding through meadows, forests, ponds, wetlands. The highlight of the center is the Birds of Prey Education Facility, or as my husband coined it, "a retirement home for birds." Plopped in the middle of the walking trails is an area of cages housing injured eagles, hawks, owls and vultures that have been rescued after accidents -- mostly of the car kind -- that left them unable to fly.
Craft brews with the locals
Holland is home to the New Holland Brewing Company, started in 1996 in the dorm rooms of two students from Hope College -- a Christian college no less.The craft microbrewery churns out four delicious beers nationally year-round, including two you'll see in many Chicago taverns: the Mad Hatter, a beautiful and hoppy India Pale Ale, and the Poet, a smooth stout. The brewery also features a dozen or so beers that you can taste only when you visit Holland (notably the Cask-Hatter), making this a must-see for beer snobs.We devoted almost an entire day of our vacation to drinking beer, first having a delicious lunch at the downtown New Holland Restaurant & Pub and then driving two miles away to the brewery for a tour. We didn't find the quick tour all that informative because we still didn't quite understand the beer-making process. But it was fun to taste a piece of barley, smell the hops, learn the history of the brewery and sample a few of the beers.After the tour it was back to the pub. In order to have the complete New Holland Brewing experience, we felt it was our duty to try each of the beers. This took time, of course, but also gave us a chance to chat with many of the friendly locals, like an adorable father and son taking in a Red Wings playoff game and a cider-chugging newlywed couple who taught me one of their favorite slang words -- "jank," meaning ridiculous, moronic or stupid. I'm doing my best to make the word catch on in Chicago, but you won't hear me using "jank" to describe my trip to Holland.
