Sleepless In Amish Country

     Among the many things I love about Columbus, Ohio, is that this city truly is a provincial capital:  one can travel half an hour to forty minutes in any direction from the city,   

...and find oneself surrounded by countryside,

...farmland,

... small-town Ohio,

...all of which Tom and I passed through last week as we traveled northeast from Columbus on our way to Berlin, Ohio, the heart of Ohio Amish Country.

      Though I'd been a non-fan of Amish Country after our first visit to Berlin years ago, last year we decided to give the place another look-see - thanks to the incentive offered by a really good Groupon deal for a local hotel, The Berlin Resort - and that second time was, for me, the charm (see posts from  2/23/2015-2/25/2015).
     And so this year we decided to return to The Berlin Resort for a Thursday-thru-Saturday get-away to celebrate our 39th wedding anniversary.  
     We set out last Thursday in the early afternoon

and stopped for lunch in Danville at a little place we found called The Hangout,

...where people were, well, hanging out,

...and eating, as did we.

   As it turned out I was much more enthusiastic about my Turkey Reuben than Tom was over his Chopped Sirloin sandwich,

...though we both agreed that the hot, crispy seasoned fries were to die for,

...as was the place's tres retro jukebox. 

   After lunch we hit the road again and arrived at the Berlin Resort late in the afternoon,

...where we learned to our happy surprise that due to an overbooking our room was upgraded,

...and we now had a balcony over-looking the lovely grounds.

Cheery, bright, and antiseptically clean, 

...the interior of The Berlin Resort is laid out in a maze of meandering, fun-to-explore hallways and stairways.

     Among the hotel's pleasant amenities are a pool, work-out center,

...beauty salon and massage room,

...a couple of lounge areas and an outdoor deck,

...a little shop,

...and a cute little theater that shows free movies.

     After we'd settled into our room, relaxed for a while and done a once-around the hotel I decided to try the 5:30 pm water aerobics class being offered at the pool.  There were five other women in the class, regulars, it turned out, who live in the Berlin area and come weekly to the class - a great work-out with a friendly young instructor -  which is available to local residents as well as the hotel guests.  The regulars, all ladies around my age except for one phenomenal 88-year-old lady, were friends who meet weekly for the class the go out for dinner afterwards.  This night they were planning on going to a restaurant down the road in the town of Winesburg and they invited me to come along with them.  I explained to them that I was there with my husband for our anniversary and so had to decline, but they were a really nice group.  "You'll sure sleep well tonight after this work-out,"  one of the ladies said to me with a smile.
       After my aerobics class we grabbed a quick dinner at an East of Chicago Pizza shop near the hotel and made it back for the 8:00 movie.

       The hotel guests can choose on a first-come-first-serve basis from a list the nightly movies, one shown at 6 pm and a second one at 8.   There were a lot of good movies on the list but unfortunately we'd already seen them all but, as no one had as yet chosen a movie when we asked at the front desk,  we requested one we hadn't seen, Pretty In Pink, an old John Hughes flick from the '80's,

...which we found to be a not terrible Romeo-and-Juliet-type teen-age love story, though nowhere near as good as Shakespeare's treatment of the subject.                

   After the movie Tom and I returned to our room and climbed into our oh-so-comfortable bed, where Tom immediately fell into the arms of Morpheus (the god of dreams, not the Matrix character), while I, in spite of  the long enjoyable day and the prediction of my aerobics classmate, spent most of the night jousting with my old nemesis, Insomnia.
To Be Continued...