You may have noticed a lack of activity in the blog over the last couple of weeks. That was because it was vacation time! This year we went to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, with a great stop at the beginning.
We left home a little later than we’d hoped – 8:00AM – but it was a decent hour. The girls were troopers and got up before 7am. The hubby packed the car and off we went. We brought a number of videos with themes for this year’s car ride, namely the Lord of the Rings and Star Wars (all but episode 2). On the first day the girls only watched The Return of the Sith because we spend most of our time singing and talking. That is pretty amazing for a 10 hour drive!
It was a great ride to Virginia full of interesting little finds. On our way through Maryland we learned that St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, whom I had grow up learning so much about, had lived and worked there. And in an eerie twist of fate, having had to scrap our plans to visit Lourdes, France this summer, we also learned that there was a shrine dedicated to Our Lady of Lourdes right off this route! So as luck would have it, we did get to visit Lourdes this year after all.
The only set back on our drive was Interstate 95 from Maryland to Richmond. The traffic was quite heavy and slow for some inexplicable reason as there were no accidents or construction. Along the way we noted that we passed the Romney campaign motorcade headed in the opposite direction which we thought might be the cause of the traffic, but we were wrong. Ah yes! There was one additional disappointment. We had planned to visit La Tienda in Williamsburg, VA, one of our favorite purveyors of imported Spanish food, alas we arrived in the area 10 minutes after closing. Next year!
There are pros and cons to staying in a restored colonial home. Representing the cons, it is not cheap and for the price they are not as luxurious as perhaps one of the rooms at its sister site, the Williamsburg Inn for the same price. However, for the pros, you can use the Williamsburg Inn’s facilities as you are guests of the larger hotel. Besides… it was darn cool to stay in one of these old homes and made it possible for the girls to really appreciate what life was like in those days. If you don’t mind not having a state of the art bathroom or technology, you will love it! We did.
We needed to rest from our long drive before but…
Please clean our room. We’re hitting the road again.
More tomorrow!
