Bill and Beth celebrate 18 years...

On Saturday night, Bill and I went to a restaurant called "La Villa Rouge" to celebrate our anniversary. It is set up in a quaint old house which was once part of a recording company. A park has been created behind it, where the record factory once stood,  and at this time of day is scattered with older ladies doing Tai Chi and children volleying balls around. We had the place to ourselves, as we were having an early dinner, with a table by a large window facing the park. It was the kind of restaurant where kids are NOT commonly seen (yeah!) and you get a little bit of very tasty food at a very steep price!

We ordered a bottle of wine with no worries about who could drink how much.....a benefit of having a driver, and the couple who hardly ever drinks, finished it off.  That would be a first in 18 years.  Now, if you had been the waiter, or the other two gentlemen standing at the desk, you may have thought that I was drunk. This impression may have begun to developed when the American girl (that would be me) came down the stairs from the restroom and missed a step at the bottom of the first landing. Our waiter, being the gentleman that he was, put his hands out to try to catch me in case I had continued to fall. I steady myself as I walk to the second flight down, and then promptly stumble down one, "I'm fine", two, "whoops!", three "honesty, I 'm not drunk!" more steps. All the while, our fine young waiter is standing at the bottom with his arms out trying to save my ass. Each time I stumble, he apologizes, "oh, saury.....saury.....oh, saury!" Just for the record..they were short steps and the back of my heal kept catching on the last one.....I was NOT drunk! Just very relaxed.

After dinner we headed to the see a Yue opera, where we were what appeared to be 2 of only 5 western people. Luckily, they were still kind enough to have screens with English translation, although I think you can get the basic story by just watching. It was fun to go and the costumes were beautiful. It was a story of an army general and his wife. There were several other male characters in the story, however, in the tradition of this kind of southern Chinese opera, every one of them was played by a female.

After a romantic evening together, we were in the mood, so we crawled into bed and .............. pulled out the fifth season of 24 and watched four episodes. 18 years.....

Love,

B