Williamsburg Again

Last November I visited Colonial Williamsburg for the first time with Amy and her family. This trip we got to visit again and it was quite fun. Amy's family went to visit on Veterans Day since former military and families got free admission. We stopped by a Presbyterian meeting house first, a place that I don't remember going into before.

Besides pictures like these that help me re-read (or read for the first time when I'm rushed touring) signs and remember general locations I also enjoy taking pictures that are fun.  The first main place we stopped was the capitol building where we went along on the next tour (starting just a couple minutes after we arrived).

The building is one of the many reasons to love Colonial Williamsburg.  I really enjoy seeing the reconstructed buildings and being able to walk through them.  Some buildings are original (with just some features restored), whereas others are completely rebuilt.  Many historic sights only have buildings that are left and don't rebuild.

During the tour we came into one room where the House of Burgess met and the guide told people to sit anywhere but the Speaker's chair (which is actually on loan from the current House in Richmond), so my father-in-law sat down in the chair where the guide sits (knowing full well what he was doing--he has a great sense of humour).  The guide then said that she and he would be "getting very close, very soon" at which point he moved to another seat.  You can watch part of her presentation in this video.

I also really enjoyed taking pictures of one of the maps.  I'd already listened to the presentation on another tour, so I listened to it out of one ear while I concentrated on taking pictures of the map at fun angles.

We also went into the coffee house, which Amy's family had never visited before.  The reconstruction had just finished last spring and we visited in the fall when they must have just started to figure out how it would work. We had drink samples (tea, coffee, and historic-type hot chocolate) downstairs in the basement from paper cups while they now serve them in one of the main rooms out of actual china cups.  The main point of the coffee house wasn't to serve drinks (like Starbucks or other modern coffee shops), it was rather a place where much business was conducted.  One of the costumed people also talked to us for several minutes and was quite interesting to listen to.

Sadly we didn't see any fires, but we did see plenty of piles of wood.  They must be getting ready for actual colder weather to hit, at which point (just like last Thanksgiving when we visited) they will have fires burning up and down the street.

Amy at one point also spotted a sign that she really liked.  I have to admit that it is pretty good.  It is a restroom sign that not only indicated the restrooms located a bit off the street as well as the next restroom down the road in either direction.

Amy's Favourite Sign.

Next we visited the blacksmith shop and enjoyed some time by the fire that was burning next to the construction site.  While at the post office we discovered that there was someone there giving people a chance to write with a quill pen.  He wrote each person's name at the top of a card and then gave them a chance to write their own name at the bottom with the quill.  Amy did quite a bit better than I did in copying his style.

I had to get a picture of the sheep.

The fences and their old wood look wonderful.

The windmill was recently moved and is being reconstructed.  Once they're finished it will be more visible and I'm guessing that people will be able to go through it or at least see it operating.

We left Williamsburg early this day so that we could go by the Glasshouse at Jamestown and then head back to Richmond.  Amy and I headed back on Saturday evening to see a bit more of the city.  We started out at the Governor's Palace gardens.

We've enjoyed the kitchen both times that we visited.  It is fun to see what different dishes the cooks can come up with.

We took some pictures of a reading of the Declaration of Independence from the capitol building before heading over to one of the taverns for dinner.

Here is the album of the pictures from Colonial Williamsburg:


~Matt

PS Last, but not least is a picture of a "rat beer" trench.  This is where the colonists would pour beer into a trench around warehouses, taverns, and their dwellings.  Rats would come towards the building and instead of coming inside they would drink the beer and drown in it when they couldn't drink it fast enough.  Just ask my wife about these architectural artifacts--she knows all about them.