continued… After we left the blacksmith shop, we continued east down Duke of Gloucester Street to the Capitol Building, which was at the end of the street.
This was the side of the building. We had to make a right turn on Blair street to get to the entrance.
continued... We picked a restaurant called Dog Street Pub, which served traditional British food. It was decorated in the colonial theme and the staff wore period costumes.
Eric ordered a sampler platter, which had ham, cheddar, stilton cheese (which wasn’t crumbly like Trader Joe’s stilton), apples, beets, hard boiled egg, salad greens, chutney and black bread. He loved it. Keith ordered bangers and mash, which was sausage served on a bed of mashed potatoes and peas and smothered in gravy. Keith liked the sausage and the potatoes, but he didn’t like the gravy… and since the gravy covered everything, he didn’t love his meal.
Monday, July 14 — We were still confused about Colonial Williamsburg. According to what we’d read online, we needed to buy tickets to see the historic town at the Regional Visitor’s Center, which was about 3/4 of a mile away from the historic district (by car, not as the bird flies). The visitor’s center opened at 1000. We pulled into the parking lot promptly at 1000, and it was packed. Parking cost $10, and it was a flat fee for the entire day.
Inside the center, there was a fairly long line to purchase tickets, which were $35 per person for 13 and up. The cashier gave us a map and explained that there was more to see and do than could be done in one day and that we needed to decide on what we wanted to see and plan our day in advance. When we asked for clarification of what exactly it was that we were going to see, he explained that the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation owned several of the buildings in the historic downtown. Their buildings had been restored to look as they had in 1775. Inside, there were actors dressed in costumes of the era explaining the history of their particular building, with the focus being on the years between 1699 (when Williamsburg became the capital of Virginia) and 1776 (just as the Revolutionary War began). Anybody could walk around the historic downtown for free and look at the buildings, but only ticket holders could go inside of the foundation’s buildings. All the buildings on the map were color coded to identify which buildings were owned by the foundation. There were several buildings that were not owned by the foundation which were open to the general public, mostly shops and restaurants. Some of those venues had their employees dressed up in period costumes, too. We later found out that not every foundation building was open every day; if it had a flag out front, then visitors knew it was open.
There was no museum in the visitor’s center like there had been at Jamestown, but there was a 70-minute movie. We decided to save the movie for the end of the day. We followed the signs out to the exit, where we could either take a walking trail to the historic area or take a bus. It was blazing hot, so we opted for the bus. We waited about 10-minutes. There was a long line, and we lucked out and got some of the last seats. According to the map, the bus did a loop around the outer edges of the 3/4 mile historic area, with multiple stops along the loop.
We decided to get off at stop 1, the governor’s palace. From the bus stop at the main road, we followed a small foot path to a smaller paved road. We passed this along the path, but the map didn’t specify what it was and the color indicated that it didn’t belong to the foundation.
On Saturday, Dad went to a marina event, then we went sightseeing around Old Town Norfolk. We came upon this museum called The Meyers House. It had a bunch of information, and I learned that a presidential candidate named Decatur was killed in a duel. If he hadn’t been killed, then Andrew Jackson wouldn’t have won, and America would likely be very different. For dinner we went to a gourmet grilled cheese restaurant. It was soooooo good, and all the ingredients were top notch. The fries in particular were very good.
Samedi, Papa est allé à un évènement de la Marina, puis nous sommes allés découvrir la vielle ville de Norfolk. On a vu a musée qui s’appelle la Maison de Meyers. Il y avait beacoup d’informations, et j’ai appris que le candidate à la présidentielle qui s’appellait Decatur a été tué dans un duel. Si il n’avait pas été tué, Andrew Jackson n’aurait pas gagné, et Les Etats Unis seraient très différents. Pour le dîner on a mangé à un restaurant de Grilled Cheese raffinés. C’était trop bon, et tous les ingredients etaient de très bonne qualité. Les frites étaient très bonnes.
On Sunday, we went to a nautical museum where they had an actual battleship that you could tour. We went to the battleship and looked around one of the decks. I got super claustrophobic and hot, so we didn’t tour the entire thing. There are some crazy things in a battleship. There was a dentist, a post office and even a donut factory! After the battleship, we looked at the museum, which was pretty interesting. I learned that the mascot for the naval training academy is a goat!
Continue readingSunrise on Wednesday, July 9, 2025:
Eric’s morning chore was to grease the windlass. We’d replaced our windlass last year before we left San Diego with an updated version of the same model. Eric was pleased to find that the updated model was easier to service than the last one. It was easy to take apart — just one screw and 2-bolts. This model also doesn’t need the oil changed; our old one did.
In the afternoon, we went to Virginia Beach to visit Miss Roxy. On the way, we stopped at West Marine to pick up some more parts. West Marine didn’t take as long as we’d anticipated, so we had some extra time to kill. We decided to visit the famous Oceanfront boardwalk. We parked at a public parking garage that Karen had told us was the cheapest parking garage/lot in the area.
