the hotel

matt and i had a ton of choice hotels points that will be expiring soon, so i booked at a partner to choice hotels called pier 5. it was beyond the nicest choice hotel i've ever stayed at!

very easy to find and right downtown on the water.

and we were "upgraded" to a balcony room with a really cool view.

can you see our cute red lighthouse peeking out at us from our balcony?

 awww, yeah!

that night we debated and searched and couldn't figure out what to do for dinner. we finally went down to concierge and took one of their recommendations, then we took the hotel shuttle and got dropped off in a super cute section of town where we ended up settling for dinner at the green turtle. it was good, but we do have a green turtle in prince fredrick if we really wanted to go there. oh well, i don't go out much on friday nights to remember that we'd need a reservation. :) we walked around after dinner and found a maggie moo's so we had to get ice cream too. it was a perfectly sweet end to a perfectly fun day. oh, well maybe not perfectly sweet. we ended up walking many, many blocks back to the hotel when our shuttle driver never showed up. it's all good, worked off some calories. :)

and that night i got the best night sleep! i didn't wake up even once! that never happens! i always get up to go potty and i didn't, it was so awesome!

the next morning we were up way early to get breakfast and then be the first in line for the lightship. we figured since we needed to walk to the lightship we might as well get there as soon as they opened and then we'd have to walk back to the parking garage which was right next to 7 foot knoll lighthouse anyway. fascinating stuff that goes through the mind of crazy lighthousers on a tight schedule!