Changing It Up In Amish Country

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​Changing It Up In Amish Country

       "Our anniversary is coming up," I said to my mate a few weeks ago.
       "Oh yeah," he  replied. "Which one is this, now?"
       "Um...forty-six? No wait, was forty-six last year?"
       "Yeah, I think is was." 
        "I think it was, too," I said.  
      But just to make sure I went and checked the old wedding invitation we keep in a frame on the shelf,

...and sure enough, this was anniversary number forty-seven.
      "So, you want to do something for our anniversary?" said Tom. "Go eat at Red Robin or Chuy's or the Gahanna Grill, or something?"
       "We  could," I said.
        "Or we could go always to Amish Country," he said.
​        "We could," I  said.
         After a brief discussion we settled  on celebrating our forty-seventh wedding anniversary by spending a couple of days in Amish Country, our fallback destination when we can't think of anything else to do for our anniversary, which is most of the time. 
         And so on Tuesday, February 27, Tom and I headed out from our town of Gahanna to the town of Berlin in the heart of Ohio Amish Country.
         As always, it was a pleasant two-hour drive through small towns and farmland.  

       We stopped for lunch at the halfway point in Danville, 

...at a delightful eatery we discovered a few years ago located across from a granary, 

...called The Hangout,

      Here I ordered my Hangout favorite, the veggie sub with the hottest, crispiest  French fries,

...and Tom ordered his favorite, the cod.

      After lunch we continued on through more scenic countryside,

...until we reached Berlin,

     Now, in the past whenever we've visited Berlin we've always stayed at the Berlin Resort, a cute, cozy hotel on beautiful sweeping grounds.

      But this year I proposed we try staying someplace new, not because we don't enjoy staying at the Berlin Resort - we do - but because, I don't know, I just felt like changing  it up a little. 
     To this end we decided to check out a newer hotel built a few years ago in downtown Berlin (such as downtown is in Berlin),

...called the Berlin Grande.

     Though the decor of our fourth-floor room was rather minimalist, this room was twice as big as the rooms we'd had at the Berlin Resort, with a nice kitchenette and "living room." 

     And though the Berlin Grande does not have a free in-hotel movie theater as does the Berlin Resort,

...our room did have a big-screen TV in front of a comfy couch,

...and we could access any number of streaming channels so that we could watch anything we wanted to, unlike at the Berlin Resort theater, which offers films chosen by guests on a first-come-first -serve basis and nothing rated stronger than PG.  So this arrangement suited us fine.
           Nor did we mind that the view from  our balcony wasn't the rolling view from the Berlin Resort rooms.

           Besides, there were nice views from the hallway windows.

        So we were happy with our new choice of Amish Country venue. I likewise suggested that we try to find someplace else to eat besides the buffet at the Berlin Farmstead restaurant, ​

...one of two restaurants in town opened past 5 pm, the other being East of Chicago Pizza. Normally, for the two nights we spend in Amish Country, we eat dinner on our second night at the Farmstead restaurant buffet, which I was getting a weence tired of, while on our first night we eat at East of Chicago Pizza, which I will never tire of. In fact for me East of Chicago Pizza is a big Amish Country attraction.
           This eatery, which serves the most incomparable pizza buffet, has for some unfathomable reason not found a home in Columbus, Ohio. (Which, considering how much I love the place, is probably just as well). So I was greatly looking forward to digging into that pizza buffet, and when dinner time rolled around we headed over to the East of Chicago Pizza...only to find that the place was closed!
To be continued...