Colonial Williamsburg

       After our semi-lame but quite fun New Years Eve, we all slept in a little longer than usual before beginning our trek to Williamsburg. After everyone got up and had breakfast we traveled to the Williamsburg visitors center. It had rained the night before and was chilly and threatening rain, but thankfully through out the day it was only cold, not raining too.
       
       Williamsburg, I guess, is kind of set up like Nauvoo, (according to Paul). It is basically a little colonial colony that you can walk through and visit houses and shops to see what it was like in colonial times. The first stop that Julie wanted to take was to see a comedy/musical show. We went into a tavern and watched the equivalent of a comedy act. Personally, I didn't think it was all that funny, but I don't have a colonial sense of humor either. The funniest part of the whole show was watching my little nephew Sage try and entertain himself. I think he was entertaining the women sitting behind us too.
     
After the tavern experience we walked through the apothecary, then walked over to the jointers. The jointers are basically like the wood workers. They build the houses, and fix everything. Once we were done looking at all of the cool wood work, we went and took a tour of the capitol. It was really interesting to see what the capitol looked like, and the history of it, but the lady that was giving out tour was SO boring. I know that it is mean to say, but she seriously had a monotone voice, no facial expressions, and put no emotion into our tour. Paul and I were sure glad when we could scurry right on out of there and continue looking at everything else.
       After the capitol we went to the jail. It was actually really neat to go and see. They told us that of the six jail cells that they had, three of them were originals from back in colonial times! They were kind of sad looking. All the cell had in it was a set of stairs, (for sitting on maybe?), and a slot in the wall where I guessed food would come in and out.
     

        We then visited the blacksmith shop, which always intrigues me. All of my brothers are into forgery and they come home with these awesome metal things, but I don't ever get to see them do it. So being able to visit the black smith forge I could get some what of an idea of all the work that they put into making their cool metal things. We stopped next at the gunsmiths shop, which was quite fascinating.  next up was the shoe makers shop, not the cobbler (because they fix shoes), but to the actual shoe makers shop. They told us that to buy a good pair of shoes it usually would costs a months wages. The cheaper shoes would cost around a couple of days wages. If I calculated that into how much I make, I just think I would never pay that much for a pair of shoes. But I guess if that was the only option I would have to go along with it.
     
       They had a big open field set up with some stocks there. I just couldn't contain myself and HAD to go put myself in the stocks. Paul, being the wonderful husband that he is, came and stood next to me in the stocks so we could pose for a picture.

We then ventured to the cabinet makers shop which was also neat. They had a lot of cool desks and finishing work that they were working on.
     

       Our last stop was one of my favorites. We went to the governors palace and watched a demonstration of how chocolate is made. They literally started with the cocoa bean and then went through the whole process of making chocolate. I had no idea how difficult and time consuming it was to get even a little amount of chocolate out of those beans. I now see why only the wealthy could afford chocolate at first. It really was a lengthy and strenuous process to make chocolate from scratch.
     
       By this time, Eric and Amanda had taken their two little ones back to the car to take them home. Paul, myself, and his parents kind of hung around a little bit longer before we headed out. We got our last few looks in, and then headed back to the condo. While everything we did fits in a reasonably small post, I assure you, that my mind was so blown from all the knowledge it soaked up. We went from place to place and every time, we were fed a little bit f history. When you get to the very end, you seriously feel so overwhelmed with all of this history. It was an amazing experience, and there is so much I didn't get to see, but what I did see was worth the while.

Tomorrows adventures will take us to Washington DC.