After Monticello and the University of Virginia, and a late dinner near campus, we arrived very late at our holiday resort. Kent was convinced we needed to buy the seven-day Historic Triangle pass for the trip, which would get us admission to Colonial Williamsburg, Jamestown, and Yorktown. I felt the shorter pass made more sense, as we had plans to spend two days in Washington, D. C. and some time in Richmond and perhaps Norfolk, plus our first day would be spent mostly at Monticello. I wisely called the resort beforehand to see if they offered any deals other than what was online and was told we should wait for arrival and talk with their concierge. She was quite friendly and helpful, and did present us with the opportunity for two free three-day Colonial Williamsburg-only passes. The catch -- we had to sit through their time share presentation (hard-sell). The whole reason we were there was because Kent already is part of a vacation time share, but this resort had their own as well.
Since the weather forecast appeared rainy that next day, and the session wasn't until noon, that did allow us to sleep in, so we went. We had been told the session would be only 60 minutes and we'd receive lunch. Well, we were there an hour and a half, and that was mostly due to my glares at the sales guy at the end (he did not want us to go without selling us), and the food was horrible (a sad trend of the trip). I kept wanting to just tell the guy to get to the pitch. The growing hunger and boredom caused me to not be able to quickly tally how much the deal was. I kept thinking that what he was saying couldn't possibly be correct, but when he finally got to more paperwork it showed my math skills were better than I thought. They wanted $66,000 or more! I kept thinking how well we could travel on that kind of money. It also caused all the minor design flaws of what before that had been our perfectly acceptable suite. Anyway, we got our tickets, but since we were going to D.C. Tuesday and Wednesday, it made since to use them later in the trip.
Since the rain had thankfully ended, we decided to at least see what we could see without tickets at Williamsburg. The parking, very nice of them, is free at the Visitor's Center. We checked out the very large gift shops, used the facilities, then walked over the bridge (you need a ticket to ride the shuttle), which allowed us to see some of the area you don't normally see on the shuttle ride. With it being a Sunday in October, and a slightly rainy one, there were sparse crowds. We wandered around a little, then made it to the Merchants Square area, with more shops, an arts fair, and, most importantly, coffee.
After checking out the shops and buying some chocolate (what touristy place doesn't have a chocolate shop?) we walked over to the College of William & Mary. It was very quiet too, with only a handful of students hanging about. I've never seen a college with cannons. I saw them near castles in Denmark pointed at Sweden, but at a college it seemed quite odd, but much of the South I was reminded is still fighting these past wars.
After the college tour, we headed over to The Crust for some very good wood fired pizza and got to experience a group that had their own karaoke singer serenading all us with 60s and 70s songs. I still can't get a few of them out of my mind.
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