Hollywood Casino Archives - Detroit Duchess

To kick off this blog I thought I would start by recapping our 2nd anniversary celebration. This seemed fitting to me because I first wanted to start a blog when we got engaged to chronicle the wedding, and then again after we were married to chronicle our newlywed adventures. I figured four years later, I’m finally going to do it!

My husband and I were married on May 7, 2011 so this was our second anniversary aka “the cotton anniversary.” We got married on the 7th because my birthday is July 7 and his is August 7 and we thought it would be cool if all of our big dates were 7-7-7 (21 in blackjack which I am obsessed with). Now in the future if we can make sure all of our kids are born on the 7th that would be pretty cool.

We got engaged in Toledo, Ohio (I will share our engagement story in another post) and ever since have jokingly called it “The City of Love.” We usually go back there once a year to celebrate our anniversary and try to do a similar trip.

This year was even more exciting because we hadn’t been back since they opened the new casino and it was Star Wars weekend (yes, I’m a nerd, I know)!

Our trip started on Friday night after work. Toledo is only about an hour drive from us so it is a nice little trip. We stayed at the same hotel we did when we got engaged and they really rolled out the red carpet for us. When we were checking in I mentioned that we had got engaged there four years ago and that we were hoping to get a corner room similar to the one we had before.

They did better than that, they got us the exact same room!! I didn’t even realize that they kept records that far back. The room number was 1023, John said he would never forget it. Kudos to The Best Western Toledo -they went above and beyond for us the entire weekend and made it really special.

After that we decided to head on over to the new Hollywood Casino for some grub and blackjack. The first thing I noticed about the casino was that it was smoke free which was just awesome! We had dinner at Scene, a sports bar restaurant and then proceeded to lose our shirts at blackjack. Oh well, we still had a great time.

We were so excited for Saturday because it was May 4 aka “May the Fourth Be With You.” We had tickets to go to the Toledo Mudhens game which was a Star War theme. The players were wearing special jerseys and they had their first fireworks of the season, set to Star Wars music. Even though they lost, we had a great time!

Chewbacca replica Mudhen’s Jerseys (photo from Crain’s Detroit Business)

“Feel the Force!” – Yoda

After the game, we came back to our room and did a special anniversary toast with our toasting glasses from the wedding. We opened a bottle of champagne that I had been saving from our honeymoon. We bought it from the Murgo Winery in Sicily at the bottom of Mt. Etna and it was delicious!

Cheers to us!

On Sunday, we made our way to the Toledo Zoo to see the elephants! My husband and I love elephants and the Toledo Zoo has a baby elephant named Lucas. We got to see their revamped African exhibit and we even got to see feeding time – it was so cool! The zoo also had two baby polar bear cubs that were about five months old. They were just darling.