Jamestown and Williamsburg

On Tuesday, April 17th we headed south for a vacation in the Williamsburg, Virginia area. The whole family went, including my parents. My dad did the driving. I would have taken a turn at the wheel but it was his car and he didn't want to share the task. We took my parents’ SUV because unlike our car it is large enough to comfortably hold five people with luggage. We hit the road around 8:30 after we had dropped our cats off at the vet’s to be boarded while we were away. It was a long day in the car and we arrived in Williamsburg around supper time. We checked into our B&B, the Cedars, which was very attractive and comfortable, a marvelous place to stay.

After we had unpacked the car we headed out for dinner. We picked Berret’s, the first restaurant we saw but a good choice. We all enjoyed our meals. The food and the service were excellent. None of us really needed desert but the delicious smell of the peach-apple cobbler from the next table was enough to tempt us. On our waiter’s advice we ordered two orders for the table because it was too large a dish for one. Two orders was enough but the cobbler tasted every bit as good as it smelled. In fact, it was declared to be the best desert Maura had ever had in a restaurant. We are still talking about it a week later.

After a good night’s sleep we gathered for breakfast. My birthday, which was earlier in the month, was celebrated with a candle in a muffin and Bob, our genial host, took our pictures. Then, after a quick stop at the Colonial Williamsburg Visitor Center to pick up our tickets we headed down the Colonial Parkway to Jamestown Island, the site of the first permanent English settlement in North America (and, of course, in Virginia). The site saw many firsts but it has long been abandoned as a town and to unpracticed eye there isn’t much there to see. Fortunately we were able to take an archaeological tour of the site of the first fort at Jamestown led by one of its excavators. Once thought to have been washed away by the James River the site of the fort was discovered in 1994 and found to be mostly still on land. Archaeologists have been at work there ever since and have discovered tens of thousands of artifacts that shed light on the history of the site and the life of the early settlers. During our tour we heard a fascinating presentation that touched on the early history of Jamestown and on the ways that archaeologists learn about it from the artifacts and the traces left behind in the soil by human activity. Afterwards we made a short visit to the Archaearium, a museum dedicated to the finds from the site. I enjoyed seeing some of the things that our guide had seen excavated but Maura was beginning to tire, so we headed back to the Historic Jamestown Visitor Center. Maura turned in her paperwork for her Junior Ranger badge and we headed back to Williamsburg for lunch and a short rest. There was much more at Jamestown that we didn’t see. We never explored most of the ruins of the 17th century town beyond the first fort. We also didn’t visit the reconstructed Jamestown Settlement on the mainland at all. Perhaps someday we will go back but we couldn’t see everything this trip.

After lunch we went to Colonial Williamsburg for the rest of the afternoon. Colonial Williamsburg is a living history museum made up of a collection of buildings, some restored originals and some reproductions based on documentary evidence and archaeological exploration of the site. Buildings that are open to the public are furnished as they might have been in the 18th century. Colonial Williamsburg is staffed by reenactors and interpreters in 18th century dress. Reenactors play the roles of 18th century people. Interpreters admit the existence of the 21st century but demonstrate some aspect of 18th century life, often by practicing an 18th century trade. On Wednesday afternoon we arrived in Williamsburg late enough that we didn’t see many of the shops and houses that were open but we did get to take in the Revolutionary City programs that reenacted events from the time of the American Revolutionary War as they happened in Williamsburg. Some of the characters were well known people such as George Washington and Benedict Arnold but others were poor whites, African American slaves, or Native Americans. The program was excellently done and gave a view of how the war affected people who might not have benefited much from American independence.

Our dinner in the evening was at Christiana Campbell’s Tavern, one of the taverns in Colonial Williamsburg. We had been looking forward to it but the evening was not as enjoyable as we had hoped. The entertainment was good—both the singer who performed with her guitar in the dining room singing 18th century songs and the character portrayals of our waitress and of our hostess who portrayed Mistress Christiana Campbell herself. As a server the waitress seemed a bit overwhelmed. She forgot things we had ordered and brought food to the table cold. The food would have been better had we been served it promptly and the evening would have more fun and memorable as we had hoped it would be.

While dinner was a slight disappointment the day as a whole was fun for everyone and we had two more days to enjoy in the Williamsburg area which I will write about next week.