Two nights at the Inn at Montchanin with breakfast and dinner for two (one night) at the Krazy Kat's Restaurant.

   The captivating village of Montchanin is located on a lily-covered rolling hillside in northeastern Delaware, a mere six miles from the city of Wilmington. The village was named in honor of Ann Alexandrine de Montchanin, the mother of Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours, the bold and inventive scientist/entrepreneur whose son, Eleuthere, created the company he named after his family in 1802. 

   The cottages at the Inn at Montchanin Village were built between 1799 and 1910 to shelter laborers from the nearby DuPont Black Powder Mills. The Inn was formerly part of the Winterthur Estate and is still listed in the National Historic Register. Owners Dan and Missy Lickle have lovingly restored its 28 spaciously romantic rooms and suites with period and reproduction furnishings in an unostentatiously classical manner. (She's a du Pont descendant) Refinements like gas-lighted fireplaces, parlors and sitting rooms, rocking-chaired porches with views of private gardens, and huge marbled baths with fit-for-royalty soaking tubs make a weekend getaway here irresistible to the amorous. 

   The paths leading from the cottages to dining rooms are dotted with whimsical proverbs: Be like a duck, calm and unruffled on the surface, but paddle like hell underneath. The Krazy Kat Restaurant is located in a one-time blacksmithery, where the previous owner lived with an abundance of kitty "kats." The restaurant's name, its stylized feline portraits and its tiger skin upholstered chairs honor her eccentricity in a comfortably kitschy way.