Michigan’s quintessential college town offers families a weekend of dinosaurs, bookstores, legendary sandwiches, leafy campus paths, fairy doors, and just enough maize and blue.
Ann Arbor is a college town, certainly.
The University of Michigan is impossible to separate from the place. Students spill onto sidewalks. Gothic buildings rise behind enormous trees. Maize-and-blue merchandise occupies prime real estate in shop windows, and on fall Saturdays, the gravitational pull of Michigan Stadium seems capable of rearranging the entire city.
But Ann Arbor works surprisingly well for families who have no college visit, football ticket, or future Wolverine on the agenda.
There are dinosaurs and fairy doors. A children’s museum where touching is encouraged. Independent bookstores worth losing track of time inside. Restaurants that have become institutions. And enough green space to occasionally forget you’re in the middle of a city.
The trick is not trying to see everything.
Here’s how to spend 48 hours in Ann Arbor with kids.
DAY ONE
9:00 AM: Coffee and Breakfast at RoosRoast
Start downtown at RoosRoast Coffee on East Liberty Street.
The independent coffee company has the sort of colorful, slightly eccentric personality that fits Ann Arbor better than a polished national chain ever could. Grab coffee for the adults and breakfast before heading out for the day.
More importantly, you’re already downtown.
Leave the car behind for a while. Ann Arbor is best understood on foot, when you can notice the murals, storefronts, students rushing somewhere important, and side streets that suddenly make you want to abandon the itinerary.
10:00 AM: Touch Everything at the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum
Walk to the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum.
This is not a museum that requires parents to spend two hours whispering, “Don’t touch that.”
Interactive science exhibits fill four floors, giving younger children plenty to manipulate, experiment with and investigate. It’s one of the city’s signature family attractions and works particularly well at the beginning of a weekend when everyone still has energy.
Give it about two hours.
You could stay longer. Don’t.
One of the pleasures of Ann Arbor is that the city itself is part of the attraction.
12:30 PM: Have the Sandwich at Zingerman’s
Head toward Kerrytown for lunch at Zingerman’s Delicatessen.
Opened in 1982, Zingerman’s has long since crossed the line between successful sandwich shop and Ann Arbor institution. The menu is enormous, the sandwiches are substantial, and the deli counter is filled with the sort of cheeses, breads, meats and specialty foods that can turn waiting for lunch into its own activity.
First-timers should at least consider the famous Zingerman’s Reuben, piled with corned beef, Swiss Emmental, sauerkraut and Russian dressing on grilled rye.
This is not the weekend to debate whether a sandwich should cost that much.
Order the sandwich.
Then find a table and let lunch take its time.
2:00 PM: Wander Kerrytown
After lunch, resist the urge to immediately load everyone into the car.
Walk.
Kerrytown’s shops and surrounding streets offer the kind of low-stakes exploring families need between scheduled attractions. If you’re visiting on a Saturday, the Ann Arbor Farmers Market adds another reason to linger nearby.
Then begin making your way toward downtown.
Along the way, watch for Ann Arbor’s tiny fairy doors tucked into businesses and buildings. Searching for them gives younger children a mission while everyone else gets to enjoy the walk.
Not every scavenger hunt needs a prize.
3:30 PM: Get Lost in Literati
Stop at Literati Bookstore on East Washington Street.
An independent bookstore in a famously bookish town could easily feel like an attraction designed primarily for adults. Literati doesn’t.
Let everyone choose something.
A picture book. A novel for the drive home. A book a teenager has been meaning to read. Something completely impractical that caught your eye downstairs.
Family travel tends to produce souvenirs that eventually become clutter. A book has a better chance.
5:00 PM: Walk Through the University of Michigan
Now head toward campus.
Cross the Diag. Find the block M. Look up at Burton Memorial Tower. Wander without turning the afternoon into an unofficial admissions tour.
If your children are approaching high school or college age, campus may provoke questions. Answer them if they come.
Otherwise, simply let Michigan be a place rather than a plan.
Walk toward the Law Quadrangle, where stone buildings, arches and immaculate lawns make this corner of campus feel transplanted from somewhere considerably older than the Midwest. Peek inside the Law Library if access permits.
6:30 PM: Dinner at Frita Batidos
Head back downtown for dinner at Frita Batidos on West Washington Street.
Chef Eve Aronoff’s Cuban-inspired restaurant is casual, energetic and exactly the kind of place that works after a day spent walking around town. The signature fritas arrive topped with shoestring fries, with choices ranging from beef and chorizo to chicken and black bean.
Kids can order mini fritas or grilled cheese, while the tropical batidos make dinner feel a little like dessert arrived early.
Order some garlic-cilantro fries for the table.
You have walked enough to justify them.
8:00 PM: Ice Cream at Blank Slate Creamery
Don’t go back to the hotel quite yet.
Walk to Blank Slate Creamery on West Liberty Street for homemade ice cream.
The family-owned Ann Arbor shop makes small-batch ice creams, sorbets and non-dairy flavors, with a rotating menu that goes well beyond chocolate and vanilla.
Let everyone choose a scoop and take it outside.
This is your first day in Ann Arbor. It should end with ice cream.
DAY TWO
9:00 AM: Sunday Brunch at Sava’s
Start the second morning at Sava’s on State Street, directly across from the University of Michigan campus.
Sava’s has been part of the Ann Arbor dining scene since 2007 and feels polished enough to make Sunday brunch an occasion without being too precious for a family meal.
Settle in over breakfast and coffee before heading out for another day on foot.
Its location also puts you exactly where you need to be next.
10:30 AM: Meet Michigan’s Dinosaurs
Walk to the University of Michigan Museum of Natural History.
General admission is free, making this one of Ann Arbor’s easiest family recommendations.
The museum explores everything from prehistoric life to the workings of the human body and the universe beyond Earth, but the prehistoric galleries are the natural headliners for many kids.
Dinosaurs have a way of leveling the age gap.
A preschooler can stare up at a skeleton in wonder. A middle schooler can dig into the science. A teenager who claimed not to be particularly interested may still stop and look.
Allow roughly 90 minutes to two hours.
12:30 PM: Grab a Slice at Joe’s Pizza
After the museum, walk over to Joe’s Pizza on South University Avenue for an easy lunch.
The Ann Arbor outpost of the famous New York pizzeria sits right in the middle of the campus action, making it an especially good stop when you want to feed everyone without turning lunch into another event.
Order slices, find a table, and watch the steady stream of students coming and going around you.
This is part of the college-town experience, too. Not every meal needs reservations or a carefully considered menu. Sometimes you want a paper plate, a good slice of pizza and somewhere to sit for half an hour.
1:15 PM: Take the Long Way Through Campus
Don’t head straight for the car after lunch.
Take the long way.
Cross the Diag again, wander past the university’s historic buildings, and give everyone a little time to explore without an agenda.
College towns are often treated primarily as destinations for prospective students. That’s a mistake.
For younger children, a university campus can simply be an enormous collection of interesting buildings, lawns, museums and people. For teenagers, it offers something else: the opportunity to quietly imagine themselves in a place like this someday.
You don’t have to point that out.
2:00 PM: Trade Sidewalks for Trails at Nichols Arboretum
Finish the active part of the weekend at Nichols Arboretum, the 123-acre University of Michigan landscape better known locally as “the Arb.”
There are trails, wooded areas, gardens and access to the Huron River. In late spring, the historic peony collection becomes the star, but the Arb works in every season.
Wear real shoes.
Some paths are uneven, and this is one Ann Arbor stop where cute vacation footwear can become a poor life decision fairly quickly.
Then walk without an agenda.
After a weekend of exhibits, menus, bookstores and campus landmarks, the Arb provides something families often forget to schedule: space.
4:00 PM: Donuts at Washtenaw Dairy
Before pointing the car toward home, make one last Ann Arbor stop at Washtenaw Dairy on South Ashley Street.
This isn’t the polished dessert shop you visited the night before. That’s precisely the point.
Washtenaw Dairy is an old-school neighborhood institution, the kind of place generations of Ann Arbor families have worked into their routines. Grab donuts for the road or, if nobody objects to having ice cream twice in 24 hours, order a cone.
No reasonable person should object.
Sit for a few minutes. Compare everyone’s favorite stop. Then head home before you’ve managed to turn a very good weekend into an exhausting one.
A College Town Worth Visiting Before College
Ann Arbor’s greatest family attraction may be the university, but not because children need an early introduction to admissions brochures and college decisions.
It’s because a great college town is inherently curious.
There are museums because people here study things. Bookstores because people read. Coffeehouses because people gather and argue and write. Gardens because somebody decided plants deserved 123 acres. Restaurants become institutions because generations keep coming back.
Over 48 hours, families can touch science experiments, stand beneath prehistoric skeletons, hunt for fairy doors, choose books, eat an enormous sandwich, grab pizza alongside college students, wander a university campus and disappear beneath the trees along the Huron River.
Older kids may begin seeing college towns differently.
Younger ones may just remember the dinosaurs.
Both are perfectly good reasons to come.
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