Monday, November 29, 2010

Home by Way of The Golden Lamb

We slept in.   The bed was huge and the comforter was comforting.  I could have stayed there all day, frankly, but Randy was up and ready to get going.  Darn.  We were in the car by 10 AM.

Now, a ride home is probably as exciting to a driver as a plane ride is to a frequent flyer. We drove from LaGrange, Kentucky to Akron, Ohio between the hours of 10 AM and 5 PM.  Obviously we stopped somewhere.

Lebanon, Ohio.  Small town.  But it was a good stop.  For me, it was the third time to have lunch at The Golden Lamb, but Randy's first. He told me he would have remembered it if he had been there before. My first time there, my mother, who was teaching Ohio History for awhile, surprised me with lunch on a trip to Alabama many years ago.

The Golden Lamb is the oldest hotel in Ohio, built in 1803, and actually opened in 1815 to the public.  It has 30 rooms which are still used as hotel rooms, and each one bears the name of a person from history who stayed in the hotel:  Mark Twain,  Charles Dickens, Harriet Beecher Stowe, to name a few.  It also has been the hotel of twelve US Presidents, most recently George W. Bush, in 2004.

There is even a hotel ghost who shows up once in awhile. Her name is Sarah, and her room is closed off except for a glass window that we could look into her room, just in case she showed up while we were there.  She didn't.

The menu shows all twelve of those Presidents, proudly, and tells the history of the hotel.  We ate a lovely lunch of chicken salad sandwich with fruit salad for me, and egg salad and the house soup of potato with ham and mushrooms for Randy.  They served rolls with apple butter that was made right there in Lebanon. (We moaned.)

The rest of the day was really uneventful, but the hour or so we spent at The Golden Lamb was worth mentioning. If you are near Dayton, or north of Cincy.......it's off I71 N just a mile or so.  History and charm.  We are talking about going there and staying in a room once used by a President.  You know we will post about it if that happens............!