A month or two before our 13th anniversary, Jonathan was putting together a secret plan for us to get away. He was so excited about it he even made me a chain to cut for each day until we left. He wouldn’t tell me anything about it until the week before, he told me we would be gone overnight and I talked him into telling me who was watching the kids. Thankfully it was my mom.

When my mom arrived we were off and Jonathan still wouldn’t tell me where we were going. He did try to trick me into think we were staying at a casino on the way. We ended up at Moondance Inn in Red Wing, MN. It was our first Bed and Breakfast stay. I was very excited. I love seeing older houses and had always wanted to experience staying at a B&B. It was a beautiful, well restored house. We were greeted by some bubbly, chocolate, and flowers when we got to our room.

After we got all our stuff settled in our room we decided to drive around and see what we could see. We stopped at a little park by the river and sat on a swing for a bit.

Then we decided to go get something to eat. We tried out  one of the restaurants in the St. James Hotel.

We had some really good fish and chips and were the only people in the place.

Driving around we noticed that the Red Wing boot was the emblem for the town.

We then stopped by the grocery store to get some snacks. We headed back to the B&B and walked around the neighborhood. There were some amazing old houses in the neighborhood.

  

We didn’t get to far when we saw these stairs.

We decided to go up them and see where they led to. Little did we know how steep they would be and how far they went up. We were both huffing by the end, but we got to see a nice view when we got to the top.

On our way down we found a sign and found out those stairs were 100 years old. They were in amazing shape for being that old.

When we got back we decided to play some of our favorite games- Settlers of Catan and Ticket to Ride.

We had a great rest that night and went down for our first breakfast in the morning. We had fruit, cinnamon rolls, and blackberry pancakes. It was delicious. Then we decided to explore downtown. The first place we went to was the world famous Red Wing Shoe Company. We got to see some of their history and the biggest boot in the world!

We checked out a few other shops and then drove to the Pottery Place. We walked pretty quickly through there and then spent a lot of our time browsing through the endless antique shops they had. We had some pizza for lunch and then went back to the B&B for some R&R. We sat out on the huge porch reading, it was lovely.

We decided it would  be fun to check out Stoney End, a folk music store. They make their own harps,dulcimers, and banjos. I got to try out one of the harps. I fell in LOVE. Someday I might like to learn to play this heavenly instrument.

That night we decided to go to a movie. I really wanted to see “The Help” since I had read the book and thoroughly enjoyed it. Jonathan went along with my desires. It was a really good movie not a whole lot different than the book. We got back to home base and played some more games.

Our second breakfast was a fruit with yogurt, sausage, and a dutch pancake with some baked apples. It was good. It reminded me of apple pie. We headed out early to get back home since Jonathan needed to get some work done.

We both had a great time. We decided that the Bed and Breakfast was a fun experience but not something we would want to do regularly. We don’t need a fancy place to have a good time together, we just enjoy each other’s company wherever we are.