If you will remember, when we went to Williamsburg the first time we bought yearly passes. (Read Part I!) So we packed up our bags less then a year later and went back to visit again! We visited some of the same places, but we also did some different things. This time we stayed in hotels for free! By this time, my mom was a tour guide part time for a local company in PA where we lived and some of the perks included checking out hotels for future tours.
Some of the highlights of this year’s stay was the fact that Yorktown (the actual town, not the museum, etc.) is super quiet. You could easily fall into a day dream about how it used to be in the 1700’s because nothing else is happening there now. It was so quiet I saw a deer during the daytime!
My favorite part was going out after dark to do a walking ghost tour. The tour guide was stupendous and it amused me that the guide had to stay in character (a person living in the 1700’s!) even if someone said that they were from Kansas which didn’t exist in the 1700’s!
Another part that I enjoyed was the printing press. There was a book for sale that had been printed on it. It merely cost $1200-1500! Good thing that printing has gotten cheaper because I would not be able to afford books at that price. As my souvenir of Williamsburg I bought a quill, a pottery ink jar, and a package of ink. Boy did I make a mess trying to write with it. Quills are a lot harder to use then you would suppose, and pottery is very porous and therefore does not hold ink at all!
After our week in Williamsburg and surrounding areas we headed home. As part of my mom’s homework for her new job we stopped at Agecroft Hall. Agecroft Hall is located in Richmond, Virginia and is an actual Tutor mansion that was built in England in the 15th century. As has happened to so many houses like it, at the end of the 19th century it fell into disrepair and in 1925 it was sold at auction. Thomas Williams, Jr. of Richmond heard of this and purchased the house. He then had it taken apart, shipped to the United States, and carefully reassembled.
The house is stunning and full of history that you wouldn’t be able to find this side of the pond, but my favorites were the gardens. They were gardens like I had never seen before and they are very well kept. They are very beautiful, but in addition they are useful as all sorts of herbs and other medicinal plants are also housed there. Agecroft Hall is completely worth an extra stop and the price of admission.
Williamsburg and its surrounding areas are full of history. So full that it is hard to take it all in even on a week-long visit. Even today I wish that I could go back again to relive the memories I made back in the 1990’s and to make some more for today!