Sunday, October 26, 2014

Our Trip to Williamsburg: Day 2

Our first stop on our 2nd day of vacation was to the Colonial Williamsburg visitor's center.

First on our agenda was to buy our passes to see the sights. On our honeymoon, we had no extra money so we just did the free things. But this time we wanted to be able to take in some of the ticketed attractions so we had budgeted accordingly ahead of time.

We purchased 7 day passes for the Historic Triangle--Colonial Williamsburg, Jamestown and Yorktown. The passes are certainly not cheap but divided over 6 days (we were only there for 6 days but our passes were for 7), the cost is very reasonable and much less expensive than purchasing tickets to see individual attractions.

We walked out of the visitor's center and headed down the path to Colonial Williamsburg.


 The walk was longer than we remembered from our previous visit. The rest of the week we took advantage of the shuttle that made a loop around the city, beginning and ending at the visitor's center. We could get on and off wherever we wanted and the longest wait at any one stop was maybe 10 minutes. We still got plenty of walking in but the shuttle rides saved a lot of time and energy! The shuttle service was free with our passes so we were tickled to make use of it!

Anyways, on our walk to the Revolutionary City, as they call it, we toured a Colonial Farmstead. I have no pictures of this which I am surprised by!

Upon entering Colonial Williamsburg, we toured the grounds at the Governor's Palace. We toured the inside of the palace later in the week.



We also took our daily selfie here.


After the tour of the gardens and grounds at the Governor's Palace, we continued walking, stopping to look in a few of the shops and touring the George Wythe house.

A note about the tours--I'm one of those people that can only take so many guided tours. But the tours we did here were very entertaining. Most were told more as a story which helped to keep my attention! Most were only 30 minutes long too.

By this time, we were hungry for lunch so we stopped at Chowning's Tavern for lunch. (I believe I have a picture of the actual building that was taken later in the week that hasn't been edited yet so I'll post it later!)


This restaurant was in Colonial Williamsburg and runs much like it would've in Colonial times. It was a fun experience to eat there.

After lunch, we walked to the nearest bus stop and took the shuttle back to the visitor's center. We spent the rest of the afternoon looking for some Washington Redskins paraphernalia at local stores and then relaxing at the hotel. We ate supper in our hotel room/suite which included a full kitchen so we could do some of our own cooking. I had brought a few freezer meals along to make cooking really easy! Our hotel also had a free hot breakfast bar every morning so most days we only ate out one time.

And thus concluded our 2nd day of vacation.

To be continued...

Monday, October 20, 2014

Reading and Eating



I started re-reading Little House In The Big Woods this past weekend and am almost finished. It is such a cozy read--charming and simple. One of my favorites! 

My plan is to read through the whole Little House series this fall/winter. It's been a long time since I read them. 

I've had a bag of butterscotch chips languishing in the freezer for some time now. They were given to us.  If they were chocolate or peanut butter chips, they would be long gone! I saw this recipe for Oatmeal Butterscotch Cookies at Living Well Spending Less and decided to bake some cookies just for the fun of it. They are really yummy!

I love fall!

**I will continue my vacation posts once we get all 200+ photos edited and organized!!!**


Sunday, October 19, 2014

Our Trip to Williamsburg, VA: Day 1


We celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary on October 2 by spending the week in Williamsburg, VA.

We honeymooned in Williamsburg ten years ago and have talked since then of going back for our 10th anniversary. About two years ago, we began actively planning and saving for our trip. The whole vacation was paid for with cash in hand-- no coming home to a credit card bill! I will share more about how we were able to do this vacation debt-free in a later post. 

I will note that this was the first time since our honeymoon that we have been away for a week by ourselves. Our longer trips over the years have been with or to visit family. 

Ok, now for the details of Day 1: 

We left for Williamsburg on Sunday, September 28. Our first stop was at Cracker Barrel a couple minutes from home. We ate at Cracker Barrel for breakfast the first morning of our honeymoon. In the spirit of recreating a memory, we both ordered Uncle Herschel platters just like we did 10 years ago. The only difference was that I couldn't completely finish my meal this time! 

Our next stop was the Virginia Welcome Center on I-85. 

We took our daily selfie here. 


The little lady at the information desk was adorable and helpful. "Have you ever taken the ferry to Williamsburg?" She asked. "Why no, we haven't," we replied. She then gave us directions to get to the ferry, explaining that it would take us across the James River and dock at Jamestown, giving us just a short trip into Williamsburg. Going this way was the same in mileage as the route we had planned and much more direct, so we went that way. 

So we drove a nice drive through the VA countryside and arrived at the ferry. The ferry ride is free and runs 7 days a week.  






If you enlarge the last two photos, you should be able to see the replicas of the ships that originally came to Jamestown. 

I will share closer shots of the ships in another post since we toured them another day. 

The ferry ride was fun and gave a unique perspective to arriving in Jamestown. 

After we docked at Jamestown, we made the short drive into Williamsburg, checked into our hotel, and then found a quick dinner before getting some rest. 

We were greeted by an anniversary card and local goodies left in our room by hotel staff. 

We needed to be rested to start our first day of sight seeing the next morning! 

To be continued...