This is a retrospective blog of my seven-week exploration of Virginia along with a journey through the Shenandoah National Park and on down the Blue Ridge Parkway to Cherokee, North Carolina. 'Retrospective' means simply that it wasn't written during the trip, but is being written after-the-fact, a little over a year later. Baaswell Sheep accompanied me and is writing the blog in the way he's done my later blogs, since he's so good with the color commentary. Unfortunately, since I didn't plan for this blog back when I was doing the trip, my pictures are limited to the major attractions, but I'll try to make those galleries a little larger than I do in my later blogs.
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We have arrived in 1700s Virginia, having spent the night in a historic room in one of the original tavern houses. There's nothing like staying in the middle of a place like this, then going outside and being in the middle of history. Even better, we get to hang around throughout the evening after all the shops close as for the night.
We started our day at the Art Museum, which was a convenient place to pick up our official ticket in a lanyard pouch, and to get a pricy but tasty lunch in the museum cafe restaurant. We then looked over the artwork and artifacts to help put our minds into the eighteenth century. It was a little strange, as we'd been here back in 2018 when they had just started renovations on the museum building. Back then, you entered through the old hospital, going down to an underground tunnel and over to the main building, then back up to ground level. Today, you enter through the new ground level entry concourse with the new cafe on the left, and then proceed into the upper level of the original main building, with more exhibits on the lower floor including the old tunnel part of that exhibit space, but the access to the old hospital is now blocked off. Confusing, isn't it? In the pictures below, take note of the statuette of Benjamin Franklin that was labeled "Washington". That's a European made piece, and those kinds of mistakes were not uncommon, as the people of Europe were hearing about the American patriots, but in an age before photography they didn't always know who was who.
After the museum, we went back to our tavern room so my companion could do some remote work, and then we went around and visited some of the many shops and tourable buildings. Temperatures were up in the high nineties, so it was a welcome relief to make regular return visits to our room to cool off and work some more. Below is a sampling of some of the places we visited. The huge tree is a Compton Oak, a mainstay of the park-like grounds out in front of the governor's mansion.
If you go west on Duke of Gloucester Street for about five to six blocks, you pass through a couple of historic blocks technically outside of the official Colonial Williamsburg area, and then you get to the vicinity of the College of William and Mary. This is where tavern house guests go if they want a more modern meal without having to get in their cars and drive, though the selections tend to be a little high end for a college area. Amusing, the one notable franchise restaurant in the area is a Mellow Mushroom, a chain that originated in downtown Atlanta, Georgia. We opted for one of the few lighter fare places, a coffee shop called Aromas World, where we enjoyed a tuna melt and a root beer (I nibbled on the potato chips). A pleasant, down-to-earth place, and the staff were nice and friendly, too.
Please note that all restaurant and product names are used simply for referential purposes and links provided as a courtesy. Reviews are the sole opinions of the reviewer: no restaurant has paid to be listed here, and no restaurant is being explicitly endorsed. In other words, go out there, try them all, and form your own opinions!
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