Colonial Williamsburg

 Thursday we went to Colonial Williamsburg(CW) with our half-price three day tickets in hand. This first day ended up being pretty much wasted on me. I woke up that morning with congestion that worsened into a headache, that culminated into nausea(extreme nausea, if you know what I mean) and chills. I managed about four hours at CW, but all in all it was a miserable day for me.

Thankfully, the next day I was much better; still weak, but better. I wore my Colonial Grey Gown and Scotland-colored petticoat, along with my new straw hat that I purchased last year at Camden, tied with red silk ribbon. I was very glad to have the hat, because I would have burned without it!

CW is big and it takes a long time just to walk from one place/event to another. Also, the buildings are all open different days at different times, and there are different speakers every day. We visited CW for three days in a row, for four to seven hours each day, and we were always tired at the end of each day.

I think I most enjoyed the tradesmen whom I could talk to about my own reenacting needs or experiences, one the weekdays when there were fewer tourists around. We enjoyed the Capitol building tour and Governor's Mansion; Raleigh Tavern and the Wythe house. As to events, all the speakers were good, and the fife and drum corps was impressive. The gardens were pleasant. Everything in the area was exceedingly expensive, so I only bought one small vase as a souvenir.

Pictures were allowed inside. This was in the Governor's Mansion. The wallpaper and paint colors were fairly different from modern tastes; I like the Colonial blue but frankly find the green a little startling. Another thing different from modern homes is the size of rooms; the Wythe house is 3000 sq feet, which is close to the size of our house, but the amount of rooms in the Wythe house is much less than ours. There were just fewer rooms! Granted, they have a detached kitchen and "bathroom", but still.

There were several sweet little gardens back behind shops and homes that were fun to walk through. The family ended up splitting into groups and touring that way; Mom likes to read everything and some of us don't have a long enough attention span for that. Jonathan and Jeremy were my tourist buddies, and we got along pretty well.