Milwaukee has never commanded the spotlight. Lying quietly on a shore of Lake Michigan, 90 miles north of Chicago, Wisconsin’s largest city has always been overshadowed by its better-known neighbour.
But now the winds of change are blowing through the city. Thanks to the relatively recent emergence of the Great Lakes as a cruise destination, more and more travellers are beginning to discover this hidden gem of the US Midwest, as visitor numbers are fuelled by an increase in sailings to the region.
This year, Port Milwaukee is expecting a record-breaking 64 ships between April and October, bringing an estimated 20,000 passengers, and finally putting the city on the map. Among them are Viking’s expedition vessels, which have been sailing these waters since 2022 – and this season the cruise line launches its first round-trip voyages from Milwaukee.
And so before I boarded Viking Octantis for a voyage around the Great Lakes, I spent some time exploring the old Rust Belt city once known as the “Machine Shop of the World”, built on the backs of hundreds of thousands of German immigrants drawn to its shores during the mid-19th century.
My first taste of the city was a little underwhelming. While the grid-like downtown had its share of grand historic buildings with shiny high-rises slotted alongside, it lacked that certain urban buzz. For a city with a population of more than 560,000, the wide roads were remarkably serene and there were few pedestrians about. Where was everyone?
The answer, it turned out, was in the Historic Third Ward, the city’s creative neighbourhood, whose restored warehouses now house busy restaurants, art galleries, craft shops and markets thronged with people.
Milwaukee is the kind of city where you have to dig out the interesting nuggets, like a treasure hunter, as I discovered on an insider tour. Our excellent guide Lisa, who descended from Italian and Polish immigrants making up the other main groups to populate this city, brought alive its German flavours on a culinary exploration of bratwurst, beer and pretzels in the city’s historic districts.
First stop was the Hill Valley Dairy in the buzzy, diverse Walker’s Point neighbourhood. Tapped into Wisconsin’s “America’s Dairyland” reputation, the artisan cheese factory produces everything from crumbly cheddars to fiery jalapeño and gooey chocolate fudge varieties, which you can taste in its “cheese and cocktail bar”.
Across the Menomonee river we pass the Harley-Davidson Museum (Milwaukee is the birthplace of the iconic motorbike, invented in 1903). Next we headed to the Old World Third Street Historic District to experience another Milwaukee speciality – a bratwurst from the city’s “Wiener Window” hole-in-the-wall takeaway, before stepping into Mader’s, a German restaurant which, since its 1902 opening, has become a local institution.
This half-timbered medieval-style hostelry fronted an interior of dark woods and heavy chandeliers that could be straight out of Bavaria, accentuated by staff appropriately clad in lederhosen and dirndls. Photographs on the walls of entertainment legends, including Clark Gable and Laurel and Hardy, revealed that we were enjoying our giant doughy pretzels in hallowed company.
Milwaukee’s German community brought their beer-making talents with them, and utilised the state’s abundant grain supplies, freshwater drawn from the city’s three rivers, and winter ice harvested from Lake Michigan, to make premium brews, carving the city’s reputation as the beer capital of the US. Brewing giants Miller, Schlitz, Blatz and Pabst were established here, leading Milwaukee to become known as “Brew City”. More recently, a vibrant craft beer scene has added zing to the industry with around 260 breweries now spread across Wisconsin, including 30 in the capital itself.
But for me, the culinary highlight was yet to come: Milwaukee’s renowned frozen custard from Gilles, which opened its doors in 1938 – the first stand in the city to serve this creamy dessert that’s more akin to rich ice cream.
All this gourmet indulgence needed to be walked off, so I joined joggers and strollers on the paths around Veterans Park, curling along the lakefront like a green ribbon and bringing a bucolic feel to this city still infused with its industrial past. Across the water, the striking sailboat outline of the Milwaukee Art Museum cut into the Milwaukee skyline.
The following afternoon, I watched that skyline slowly vanish as we sailed northwards to Mackinac Island in northern Michigan. Sitting beside the strait where Lake Michigan meets Lake Huron, Mackinac couldn’t have felt more different from industrial Milwaukee. Picture-perfect clapboard houses lined streets scented with the sweet smell of fudge and echoing with the rhythmic clip-clopping of horses pulling carriages – the main form of transport on this cutesy little island where, refreshingly, cars are prohibited.
It turned out to be our last taste of civilisation before the tenor of the cruise changed and we dived into remote bays and islands sprinkled across Lake Huron’s upper reaches into Ontario. Here, Viking Octantis’s expedition credentials came into their own.
We raced across the waves on thrilling high-speed rides aboard the ship’s special-operations boat, and explored craggy outcrops of eye-catching pink granite with its fleet of inflatable Zodiac craft during the line’s maiden call to the Benjamin Islands. We paddled kayaks through the gin-clear waters of the Fathom Five National Marine Park and peered in astonishment at well-preserved shipwrecks lying just below us while, in Frazer Bay, warriors and storytellers of the Ojibwe people gave an absorbing insight into their tribal traditions through stories and dances.
It was a world of delicious isolation as our sailing took on a more expeditionary feel with on-board talks, briefings and even scientific experiments that culminated in the release of a weather balloon.
For those aboard the 378-guest Viking Octantis (most of whom were American, with just six Britons), life revolved at a luxuriant pace with superb dining, particularly at the ship’s Italian restaurant, Manfredi’s, and lazy spells in the pool and thermal suite that were surprisingly uncrowded.
Our final stop amid the bright lights of Chicago injected a suitable slice of razzle-dazzle, bringing the curtain down on a voyage that showed how authentic flavours of America’s Midwestern past are still shaping the nation of today.
Essentials
Sara Macefield was a guest of Viking, which offers a nine-night Great Lakes Treasures round-trip voyage from Milwaukee, including calls at Mackinac Island, Frazer Bay, Algoma and Chicago, from £7,140pp, including flights, gratuities and selected excursions. Departures from May – September 2027. A two-night add-on Milwaukee stay, including B&B accommodation and two tours, costs from £1,199pp.