Day 68: Celebrate One Year of Marriage

Our one year anniversary is fast approaching. I wanted to celebrate in style and go somewhere fancy. I suggested a Caribbean island -- somewhere with a short flight and all-inclusive food and booze (Shawn loves a buffet). Since both Shawn and I are pragmatic and practical people, we decided to go away the weekend before our anniversary, since we knew we would not have access to our Hamptons share that weekend. Why waste a weekend in the Hamptons we have already paid for when we will just be sitting around New York the week before anyway? And since we are both practical people, we decided not to go to the Caribbean during hurricane season and save what we would have spent on our flight by going somewhere close by that we could get to by car.

That's how we landed on Newport, R.I. and I made my second trip to the country's second-smallest state in two weeks. We started our journey around 3 p.m. this afternoon which, it turns out, is possibly the worst time ever to leave the city and drive across Connecticut. First, we drove up to my parents' house to drop off the dog, then we hit the road to Newport. After several hours of practically stand-still traffic, we arrived in Newport around 8 p.m.

We spotted a rainbow during our long drive

Our hotel, Hotel Viking, is beautiful and stately with Adirondack chairs on its porch and outdoor seating at the restaurant. We were starving and ate dinner at the hotel's restaurant, but it was not the best. Still, we told the waitress it was our anniversary and we got a free dessert! That certainly did not disappoint.

We ate it up!

After dinner, we took a quick walk around our hotel to explore a little. Though it was dark and late, we did notice a few of the houses in the surrounding neighborhood are really, really old. We also realized that our hotel is a good 10 minute or so walk from the bustling downtown/harborside area of Newport, which should make getting around a little more difficult than expected. Tomorrow morning we're going sailing and we have many more adventures in food ahead this weekend.