caracolina

Today’s breakfast at the Old Chickahominy House included a real treat, the best homemade biscuits I’ve ever had. I like biscuits in general, although I rarely eat them and never have them with gravy. The biscuits at Chickahominy House are rectangular, not crumbly and just wonderful. What I couldn’t eat I wrapped in a napkin and brought them with me for a later snack. After breakfast we walked through Colonial Williamsburg which was just waking up. Cars with maintenance crews were moving around the empty streets and it just made me want to stick around and wait for the period folks to reappear. Alas, after a round in the gift and book stores it was time to move on, since we had our sights set on Mount Vernon.

On our way northeast, clouds and gray sky gave way and when we arrived at George Washington’s home it was sunny and hot. We purchased our tickets and audio tours and made our way past workshop and maintenance buildings to the mansion. A long line had formed in front of the building and we figured we’d tour the rest of the grounds first, in the hopes that the lines would be shorter later, when the school kids were done with their field trips, which turned out to be a correct assumption. When we were had completed our round the wait was minimal. Visitors walk through the building in a continuous line while guides offer information about the individual rooms. Sadly, that doesn’t give the individual time enough to linger but it was nonetheless a great experience. Afterwards we spent some more time in the museum which was also very interesting. One thing we couldn’t do here today was a boat ride on the Potomac, but I hope we’ll come back for that another time. By the way, we could have done without the audio tours. They didn’t offer that much more information than was available on signs and it was more fun to talk about things than walk around with headphones on. Funny, the only other place we ever gave audio tours a try was Graceland, the home of another American legend, and that was only because they were included in the price of admissions and we gave up on the headphones pretty quickly there as well.

From Mount Vernon it was only a short skip across the Potomac to Washington, DC. It didn’t take us very long to find our hotel, the Hotel Harrington, check in, and park the car. After a quick bite of pizza we were on our way to explore. We walked past the Washington Monument, through the World War II Memorial, past the Reflecting Pool, and up to the Lincoln Memorial, where we lingered until the sun was gone. On our way back to the hotel we stopped to admire a few buildings, including that of the Organization of the American States, and, of course, the White House.