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 in hindsight 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 them, my pictures are limited to the major attractions, but I'll try to make those galleries a little bigger than I do in my later blogs.
Select/click any image to see it at double (or more) the current size. Select/click on the large image or any part of the darkened area to return to the blog page. Note: Table of contents is now located at the bottom of the page.
We escaped the 1700s to go back to the 1600s and visit the Jamestown Settlement, a place my companion had not been to since he was a small child. So, just to confuse you, there's actually two Jamestowns: the Jamestown Settlement and the Jamestown Historic Site. The former is a recreation of the fort and Powhatan village, with a modern building housing a museum, cafe, and education center. At the time it was created, they didn't know exactly where the original Jamestown had been, as the site had been abandoned for more than a century with no records kept of its location. In more recent times, archaeologists have been able to locate the original site and unearth various foundations for the fort. This site is a national historic site and open to the public, but it's just an archeological site: nothing has been recreated. We didn't have a chance to see the historic site, so we can't comment on it. More about the Settlement site in a moment.
Nameless Cafe, Williamsburg, VA
I hate to write negatively about any place if I can avoid it, yet this place gave us some of the worst service we have ever seen. I'll leave the name out, but I do want to comment on the service nevertheless. We went in and had a bit of a wait to get a table, but it wasn't that bad. However, after we got a table, we saw our server exactly once. She took my companion's full order (drink and food) and promptly disappeared, though we did see her going back and forth a few times. Another lady finally brought out our food, but we'd never gotten our drink. My companion told that lady and she went and got the drink. Our supposed server never checked on us at all, and finally someone else came by and my companion requested a check so we could pay and get on to Jamestown. Not sure what was going on there, but there definitely seemed to be crossed lines of communication. A shame, because the food – a nice cracker and spread sampler plate – was very good, and we would have likely gotten some desert if our server had been willing to actually wait on us. As you can imagine, we left no tip whatsoever.
Jamestown Settlement, Jamestown, VA
We arrived at the Jamestown Settlement about two in the afternoon and had three hours to explore it, which was just about right, though we had no time to go over to the historic site (both closed at 5 PM daily). If you can get their earlier and see both, that would be ideal, as I'm sure it would be interesting. My thought would be to visit the recreation at the Settlement first, to get a good image in your head of what life was like back then, and then visit the historic site to put that into the right geographic perspective. As it was, we enjoyed what we saw at the settlement, starting out in the museum, which is huge. From there, we went outside and hiked down to the Powhatan village, exploring the recreated huts and watching some costumed interpreters presenting examples of native daily work life. From there we went down to the docks, where they have recreations of the Pinta, the Niña, and the Santa María, albeit the latter was out that day, being refurbished by a New England boat builder. We went onboard one of the other two and got a close-up look at just how cramped the conditions were for such a long voyage across from Spain. We then went into the fort and explored the various buildings there before returning to the museum and heading out just before they closed at five.
We had seen an ad for a shop on "Main Street" Williamsburg, called the Nautical Dog and Schwartzy's Cat Cove. My companion looked the place up and learned it had a room full of adoptable cats, and you could go in with them to interact with them. Well, we located the place to discover that "Main Street" is just an outdoor shopping mall, but a perfectly decent one. We walked around for a while, finding the Cat Cove and look around in the pet shop part of it. Ultimately, my companion decided not to go into the cat room, fearing it would be too hard to peel himself away, and it was definitely not the time or place to be considering a cat adoption. He was able to look in from the outside windows and get a number of pictures.
Blaze Pizza, Main Street, Williamsburg, VA
While walking around, my companion spotted this place – he'd eaten at a local location back home a number of times in the past, but that was before he moved, so he hadn't been to one in a long time. Not seeing anything that looked more interesting, we had dinner there, him getting a build-your-own personal pizza, and me having a nice side salad. He said it was much like he remembered it.
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!
We arrived at the Jamestown Settlement about two in the afternoon and had three hours to explore it, which was just about right, though we had no time to go over to the historic site (both closed at 5 PM daily). If you can get their earlier and see both, that would be ideal, as I'm sure it would be interesting. My thought would be to visit the recreation at the Settlement first, to get a good image in your head of what life was like back then, and then visit the historic site to put that into the right geographic perspective. As it was, we enjoyed what we saw at the settlement, starting out in the museum, which is huge. From there, we went outside and hiked down to the Powhatan village, exploring the recreated huts and watching some costumed interpreters presenting examples of native daily work life. From there we went down to the docks, where they have recreations of the Pinta, the Niña, and the Santa María, albeit the latter was out that day, being refurbished by a New England boat builder. We went onboard one of the other two and got a close-up look at just how cramped the conditions were for such a long voyage across from Spain. We then went into the fort and explored the various buildings there before returning to the museum and heading out just before they closed at five.
