This weekend was my birthday. The big 4-5. Ugh! My first treat was coming home Friday night to a huge bouquet of flowers at my door courtesy of my wonderful brother, R.
On Saturday my sister, S, treated me to an overnight stay at the Bavarian Inn in historic Shepherdstown, WV. What a neat little town it is. And what a beautiful drive to get there and back! The Inn was super easy to find, thanks to the good directions on the Web site (http://www.bavarianinnwv.com). Once I entered West Virginia on Saturday morning, it began raining rather heavily. Combine that with twisting 2-lane roads and your power of concentration really gets a workout! We met up at the Inn, checked in, and then hopped into her Jeep to go see the shops in Shepherdstown and have lunch. The top photo is of the Yellow Brick Bank, which is the restaurant where we ate. It used to be a bank, and what was the vault is now the wine cellar. It's a neat place with funky decor and good food. We enjoyed salad, wine and good conversation. The middle photo is of one of the lodges at the Inn, which is situated on the Potomac River. The bridge in the photo is the Potomac River Bridge. The bottom photo is a view of part of the "downtown" area of Shepherdstown. There are some cool shops in the area and we visited nearly all of them! What else can you do when it's pouring buckets outside? At least temperatures were in the low 60's, so we didn't need coats.
Once we'd had enough of that, it was back to our room to freshen up and change for dinner. We dined at the Inn and the food was excellent. The server and other staff were all very friendly. When our server brought the dessert tray to us, we selected a slice of double-chocolate cake. My sister let it slip that it was my birthday, and the slice of cake arrived with a lit candle on a plate on which was written "Happy Birthday" in chocolate icing. Tasty!
We were so full and sleepy that we just went back to the room and watched movies for the evening. The next morning it was FREEZING outside. A cold front had moved in overnight and it was windy and overcast. We went to breakfast at the Inn, which was also delicious. There was a trio of people sitting a table behind me: a couple and a middle-aged guy were having a rather intense discussion about the disintegration of the guy's marriage thanks to his wife's chronic alcoholism. The man actually broke down in tears as he explained what had been going on with both her and his children. When we left the restaurant, S and I were discussing what we'd overheard and discovered that we'd both felt like walking over and giving the guy a hug. We felt so sorry for him in his predicament.
We went back to the room, gathered our things and went to our cars to head back to our respective homes. The time just flew, but it was so nice to have that one-on-one time with S. She's such a wonderful sister!
Once I got home, I had just enough time to unpack, run errands, put groceries away, and get freshened up and changed to go to dinner at R's. At my request, he'd made roast beef, mashed potatoes and green beans with Black Forest Cherry cake as my birthday cake! He'd done the roast in a crock pot and it had simmered away for 10 hours, so it pretty much fell apart on the serving platter. OMG, it was so good, I strong-armed him into giving me some of the roast to take home!
Now it's the start of a new work week. Yuck. At least we have Thanksgiving to shorten next week!
