Tourist Tours: Colonial Williamsburg

Started the day out headed to Jamestown, Virginia, to see the Christmas displays. Even with GPS, we got turned around and ended up at Colonial Williamsburg. Which was fine, it was also on our list of places to go. However, since we didn't plan to go there, and we had a late start in the day, we didn't buy any of the day passes.

This is a living history outdoor museum. There are several buildings, such as the governor's palace or the plantation, which are all re-created or re-decorated to match the period furniture, but these are the buildings that require a day pass. Next time, we'll plan to get there at the opening time, and spend the entire day, going into all the buildings.

After our short walking tour/visit today, our vote is: Go For It!

It's a very effective step back into time, even with the scores of tourists wandering around and mingling with the actors dressed in period clothing, telling period stories, whittling wooden chains with little sharp knives, or pounding on red-hot (literally!) iron rods that will soon become beautiful and smooth and perfectly sculpted tools or kitchen items. For more information and better pictures, go to their website!

We didn't know what to expect even once we accidentally got there, but we parked in the visitor parking lot and figured we'd go inside and find out.
Well, you walk a nice little distance, go into a huge building, figure out which passes you want to buy, and then either take the bus or walk to the colonial part of the town.

First, you walk across a good-sized bridge. Every so often, you come across a date stamp, here are the ones you see on the way into the park:














The scenery, even though it is winter, is spectacular! There are awesome trees everywhere, holly bushes full of red berries, and other evergreens all over the land.


Notice the style of fencing, which is something I grew up seeing on a weekly basis, as St. Mary's City has a living history area with the same style of old-tyme period fences. Here are where the bulls roam around. If you look carefully, you can see one of them sticking out at the end of the fence.

Further on down the road, we found two cows, each with a nursing calf.

Some of the buildings and equipment on the grounds are authentic, some are reproductions, but all are as authentic to the period as possible. This windmill was rather interesting. There are about 80 buildings on the property that are privately owned. We don't know what the specifically means (i.e., do they live there, is it a shared/summer home in the family, is it property willed down to the families that just isn't open for display), but we had momentary flashbacks to the 3 years when we lived on the school campus back in California. Can you say "No Privacy!!!!!!!" Oh, and "FishBowl!" If people do live in these houses, they hide it very cleverly. No modern cars or anything out of period was visible on any of these properties.


Some of the buildings were just huge! Here are a few. Remember, there were no cars back then in the 1700's, just horses and buggies, but the roads between the houses and sidewalk areas were plenty big enough for everyone to get around.



Hmmmm, this looks like an interesting tavern. Not sure what one would have to do back in the day to get one of these "16 good rooms".

Hard to see with this photo (as our camera batteries died early on, and we had to take the rest of our pictures with our phones)
BUT, check out the HUGE grapevines! They have to be oldest living part of this entire town! There are several around the area, and they go across a setup that makes a natural overhead ceiling for an outdoor restaurant. Some of those vines exceed 6" at the base, they are by far my favorite part of the entire colonial Williamsburg display! I want to be sure we go back there in the summer when they are in full reproduction, that's got to be a breathtaking sight with all the grapes hanging down from the ceiling.

The guys found George Washington sitting around working on important paperwork.

There were fresh wreaths everywhere. All of them made from various greenery, but many with fresh apples, oranges, pinecones, dried flowers, wheat branches, and other natural or farm items on them. Here is one of the larger ones:

Towards the town part of the park, there were more stores. From the Candy Store, which of course we went into, check out these candy canes! The last time Chris had a spiral lollypop, he dropped it on the road and it cracked in a hundred pieces. And, he cried. So, imagine how excited he was to see these! We got him one that we let him open on the way home. Of course he didn't finish it, and it dried nice enough that he can keep going back to it. Very pepperminty...

Ahhh, my sweet hubby couldn't resist!

The smithshop was incredible! The guys here are working on making an axe blade, which resembles nothing like what you'd get in Lowes! They had an assortment of other tools the guys have made, and the intricate work and smooth final results are just awesome! They had long handled spoons, spatulas, forks, etc. and all kinds of garden and shop tools. They use their wares in the park there, on display in museums around the country, and also sell some in the shops.

One of the period buildings, with an interesting pouring pitcher decoration.

The horses and buggies pull people around, these guys were taking a break.

Time to go home. If you want to hear a funny story, ask Mike about what happens when you hide at the end of a tunnel to jump out and say "Boo" to your son, but end up scaring the be-jeezus out of a total stranger instead! Ha Ha! That was a knee slapper! No one saw it coming, especially Mike!

After a couple hours of walking around and talking to the living history folks in the town, grabbing a hotdog and just running around, this is one tired boy. And we still had a little distance to walk back to the car. We had to play it by ear for him this afternoon, since he started the day off not feeling 100%, but we took it slow, and he did fine.


Can't wait to go back when it's a little WARMER and, of course, earlier in the day. In fact, this would be a great place to take friends or relatives who want to come and visit for a few days!