For our first anniversary, we decided to go to Philadelphia. I made arrangements to stay at a 4 diamond hotel in Center City (downtown) Philadelphia. I also made arrangements with the hotel before we left to have a bouquet of flowers waiting in the room to surprise Andrea. The bouquet included Calla Lilly’s which were in Andrea’s wedding bouquet.

The weekend was a great getaway for both of us. We had leisurely Friday evening and I surprised Andrea with several James Bond movies. The cabin we rented in Minnesota for our honeymoon had all of the Sean Connery Bond films and we watched them on our honeymoon. We called it ‘Bonding’ when we would sit down to watch one in the evening.

We spent Saturday visiting different sites around the city. We saw Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell and the Franklin Institute. We also had Philly Steak sandwiches for lunch. For dinner, we went to an upscale Mexican restaurant.

We left Philly on Sunday morning to drive down to the National Cathedral in Washington, which is a shrine dedicated to Mary. We thought it was fitting that on our first anniversary we honor Mary by going to mass in her shrine. It was a wonderful High Mass with a full choir. After Mass we drove down to the National Mall and saw a few sites there before heading over to the Maryland shore for dinner. We arrived back in Philly in the evening.

We drove home Monday, but not until we stopped at the Delaware and New Jersey state high points. We’ve been trying to visit the state high points and we visited the Iowa state high point on our honeymoon. We also drove on the Lincoln Highway (another pet project of mine) on our honeymoon new Philadelphia and so on our first anniversary we drove a section of the Lincoln highway west from Philadelphia connecting our first anniversary with our honeymoon!