Wedding Anniversary

The other day, J and I celebrated our wedding anniversary. The week before we had been walking around downtown and decided to suss out some places where we might have a nice dinner to celebrate, and maybe even stay in a nice hotel downtown. We checked out the 4 and 5 star hotels in the vicinity of the central square, Zhongshan Guangchang (中山广场), such as the Shangri-La, the Furama, the Ramada and the Bohai Pearl. After taking a tour of the hotel restaurants and seeing some of the rooms, we made our decision and ended up making a booking at Dalian's newest five-star, the Intercontinental at Friendship Square (Youhao Guangchang).
On our special day, J met me at DUFL-School of Chinese Studies, which is near one of the old Japanese sections of town. There are lots of Japanese restaurants in the area, so we went to a place called "Man" (萬: meaning "10,000" or bountiful, I suppose). J had a sashimi and tempura lunch set and I had the grilled mackerel (shioyaki sanma) set, both of which were excellent, and ended up costing less than we'd probably spend for the same meal in Japan.
After lunch, we found the weather had taken a turn for the worse. It was snowing and bitterly cold outside, which put a cramp in our plans to head over to the old Russian section of town and check out the art center there. At the same time we realized that we'd forgotten to bring the credit card that we were planning to use to pay for our lavish dinner and room at the Intercontinental. So we jumped on a bus and went back to J's place, where her parents were surprised to see us back. We explained what happened, grabbed the card, warmed up a bit, and then headed back out.
The dinner at Cafe 6 at the Intercontinental was amazing, and we felt all the more pampered since we were the only two people in the restaurant. Since it was still during the official Chinese new year holiday, most people were still outside of the city and no one was making business trips that would require staying at such a hotel. So J and I chose any table in the place and had about 4 people waiting on us the entire evening.
We took our time and enjoyed the atmosphere, along with a bottle of white wine we'd brought from Japan (which the staff kindly chilled and served for us), a dish of farfalle bow-tie pasta di mare with calamari, and a roasted rack of lamb with a rosemary breading, followed by some creme brulee for dessert.
Our room was like a small apartment, located in the corner of the hotel with massive windows overlooking Zhongshan Square. We woke up early the next morning to see the sunrise over the Bohai Sea beyond the nearby port, and soon after 7am, from the 34th floor, we saw a number of companies blasting off spectacular firework displays in the middle of downtown to start off their first day back in business in the new year. Back at Cafe 6, we enjoyed a maddeningly diverse buffet breakfast with everything from smoked salmon and capers and cheese platters to dim sum Chinese dumplings to pancakes and pitchers of fresh juice.
It was heart-aching to have to leave for my Chinese class after that, but J stayed at the hotel for the late check out, taking advantage of the wifi network and desk in the room to get some work done, looking like a high-powered executive perched in a penthouse. After my class, I came back and met her at the hotel and, with the weather looking better that day, we did manage to make it over to the old Russian street.
It was an anniversary to remember and I hope we can celebrate future ones even half as well.