I had a post scheduled for yesterday celebrating my blogiversary, so I was able to take it easy on Sunday. Boy, did we need to take it easy.

From the beginning, our trip to Washington D.C. to see Paul McCartney in concert was thrown off. We planned to go to the Newseum before the concert when we arrived Saturday, but we were caught up in traffic, and by the time we got to our hotel there wasn’t enough time to get to the museum before it closed. We decided to go to dinner instead.

We had a lovely frugal dinner and stayed within budget. Paul McCartney was fantastic, and absolutely worth the trip. It truly was a once-in-a-lifetime experience that Tony and I will remember for the rest of our lives. This wasn’t an instance where we blew some money on something we’d soon forget.

The concert was even better than we expected. A setlist that included a ton of our favorite Beatles songs, fireworks, and a killer finale were some of the highlights. We had a fantastic time.

It was all downhill after we left, though. In hindsight, I know a lot of our problems resulted from poor planning. This was a spur-of-the-moment trip, for the most part, and we didn’t put as much planning into it as we do other trips.

We ended up lost in the D.C. suburbs of Maryland for two hours while we searched for a Metro station. I wore the wrong shoes and ended up with feet covered in blisters on our 10-mile hike to find a train station. It goes without saying that being lost in a strange city at 1:30 in the morning isn’t a safe situation.

Sunday pick ups at our kennel are by appointment only, and we set ours at 11 a.m. to avoid being charged for an extra day.

Even though we didn’t get back to the hotel until 2 a.m., we had to get up and drive home at 4:30 a.m. to make it back in time. We considered leaving as soon as we got back to the hotel, but we were just too exhausted and neither of us wanted to completely waste the hotel after paying $100. So we slept for 2 and a half hours before getting up and heading home.

So. What have I learned here?

1.) Never — I repeat, NEVER — wear anything but walking shoes if you think you’ll be walking even a little bit. Trust me on this one. My feet are proof that it’s a bad idea to risk it.

2.) In a stressful situation, the last thing you want to do is start yelling at your spouse. After walking for two hours, we started bickering and snapping at each other. We were both stressed, exhausted, and frustrated. Yelling at each other only made it worse.

3.) Don’t freak out! We followed a group of people from the concert thinking they were looking for the train. When it turned out they were just walking to their car that they’d parked a couple miles away, I completely lost it in the parking lot. It was the END OF THE WORLD. That didn’t help the situation either. It only delayed us and heightened the stress of an already chaotic situation.

4.) ALWAYS charge your cell phone completely if you’re going out of town.

Now that we’re safe at home and my injured feet are bundled in soft slippers, it’s all pretty funny in hindsight. We made a lot of mistakes on Saturday, but we also created a lot of memories. Our relationship is strong enough to endure some misplaced snapping without hard feelings, and we’re able to look back and laugh relatively quickly.

All in all, between the tickets, gas, dinner, and the hotel, we spent a little under $250. The night was half fantastic, half fiasco, but all of it was an experience I wouldn’t take back. I don’t think I’d want to live through the Metro search again, but I don’t have any regrets.