Cleveland, May 2012

To celebrate our 23rd wedding anniversary we took a trip to downtown Cleveland last Friday night.  I surprised Courtney and instead of taking a right turn on the way home from work we took a left turn and drove to the Ritz.  I was surprised that Courtney was surprised because it took a bit of doing to arrange everything and to keep the girls quiet.  We were very happy once we checked in to find out that we were upgraded to a beautiful two room corner suite with a huge sitting room, two bathrooms and great bathtub.

a plate of chocolate covered strawberries awaiting us in our room
happy to be by ourselves for the night
the view from our room. this is looking east down prospect. the building in front of the truck is the new Cleveland casino that just opened up on Monday.

After unwinding and having a glass of wine in our room we headed down to the lounge in the Ritz for a cockail.  We then took a stroll around downtown on our way to dinner.

classic Cleveland architecture
the arcade is still as beautiful as ever
inside the arcade. no one around at 7:00 on friday night. how do we change this?
just across the street though East 4th was hopping.
creeper shot of the cool bar at Lola where we had dinner. see http://www.EatOnEdgecliff.com for all the delicious details
we took a walk after dinner to try and relieve our food coma. ended up hanging out at the soldiers monument on public square that I don’t think I’ve ever really looked at too closely before. It was a beautiful night
came back to a turned down bed with chocolates on the pillow. nice.

We took another stroll downtown the next morning before breakfast.  We walked around the new convention center/ medical mart construction area, down to the rock hall / voinovich park and then back up 9th to Euclid.  I am so happy to report that I am optimistic about downtown Cleveland after a long time of not being so.  I hope it lasts!  Michael Symon had a nice bit today in the Huffington on Post about Cleveland.  Let’s hope that all this positivity keeps on going.  Article here.

public square entrance of tower city in the early morning.
the fountain on the mall by Key with the sun coming up

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