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Sorry the photos are not displayed in order taken. Photobucket sucks!
This trip was inspired years ago by a
newspaper article which was reprinted in our News & Observer's travel section one Sunday many years ago. I cut it out and stuck it on my bulletin board and finally an opportunity arose and Clay agreed to take this trip.
Note: Frank Lloyd Wright images are closely held, so we will not be able to post any photos here. Be sure to click any links, as those will be the only FLW photos you will see of what we saw! Remember that any photo posted in this blog, you can click to view full-size. Since we took the time for this trip now to accommodate Clay's work, we had a specific number of days to use, since they were on the way we added Monticello and Antietam to the trip to the Wright houses in Pennsylvania. While we in Charlottesville, we realized there were 2 other President's homes within 30 miles, so we also visited Ash Lawn-Highlands and Montpelier.
We were up early this Sunday morning, September 4, for a quick breakfast and to start our 4-hour drive to Charlottesville to see Monticello. We had purchased tickets online for our timed entry at 1:15pm. Instructions were to arrive at least 30 minutes in advance to pickup our tickets and take the shuttle bus up to the house from the visitors center. We got there about 11am and just beat the crowds to get our tickets. We used the restrooms and took the lay of the land.
Then we drove just a ways back down the road for the southern buffet lunch at
Michie Tavern (ca.1784) at $16 or so each. It was OK. We had chicken, fried and barbecued, pulled pork barbecue in a slightly sweet, vinegary red sauce, black-eyed peas, green beans, mashed potatoes and I don't really remember what else. Dessert was extra, so we skipped it. The cornbread was very spongy! We wandered all the grounds and visited all the shops and spent some money and got a card stamped at all 4 shops to enter a drawing for a free return trip. Drawing to be held in November, if we win we'll be back.
We were back at
Monticello about 1pm to catch the bus up to the house for our 1:15pm regular tour. Today turned out to be very hot. Then, after we had our timed house tour and were taking the Plantation Life tour along the lane of house gardens and slave house foundations, it started raining. (It rained the rest of the trip. It was what was left of Tropical Storm Lee. It was a LOT of rain. I will say it has been a busy time for the mid-Atlantic states starting with the
earthquake that everyone who felt it is still talking about, then Hurricane Irene and now Lee.) Anyway, we had not brought an umbrella up with us since it was so sunny and hot. So, when it started raining we left the tour and walked back down the hill, past the Jefferson family cemetery and to view the film at the Visitor's Center.
Everything was very well done and impressive. We were a bit disappointed that the tour of the house was only about 20 minutes. It was very crowded and the groups were large. I guess there is no avoiding that, but in hindsight after the hour+ long tours at the other houses, we really felt we had missed a lot. I will say that there were other tours than the one we took and we did look at the longer, more intimate and detailed tours but they did not fit our schedule. So, that is our loss.
After we left Monticello, we drove backtracking about 15-20 minutes to our hotel for the evening,
Comfort Inn-Monticello. It was in a great location, a value priced for what we got. It was a standard room, clean, nice bathroom, included buffet breakfast and Internet. There was a pool much in use as it was so hot. We did not realize there was a fitness room until we went to breakfast the next day! Also, a note for light sleepers, the A/C unit was excessively loud!
But, we decided to go see
UVA! We had dinner at
The Virginian across the street from
Jefferson's Rotunda at UVA.
The UVA campus is gorgeous with a very traditional university feel. We had a good dinner at the very conveniently located The Virginian restaurant. We were so hot and sweaty though and we were seated right by the kitchen and it was so hot and noisy there that we really didn't get the best experience I fear. Clay had ribs so he was happy anyway! We were done for the day and drove back to the Comfort Inn and to bed. That is it for today. More tomorrow...
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