Friday, January 29, 2016

Christmas 2015 and Charlottesville

I'm so far behind in posting and I don't even care anymore. I'm working full time and essentially going to school full time, so if I get a chance to post, it's a lucky day.

We had such an amazing Christmas. After our trip to Cambodia fell through we decided to stay in the DC area instead of spending a million dollars to go home for the holidays. And honestly, it was such a great decision.
On Christmas Eve we had dinner and a little program with 3 other couples who also stayed home. Everyone brought traditions from their families and we played games and laughed and ate so much food. It was such a great night.

On Christmas we relaxed at home and opened presents. We were so lucky that we had such kind family who shipped us presents so we could still share the day with them. After sitting on our butts all morning we headed out to my family's tradition of seeing a movie on Christmas. I've done this my whole life and it's surprising how many people have joined in in the last few years.
Hal's work gave him a last minute gift and we decided to use it and go somewhere fun for a few days. We left Christmas afternoon and headed down to Charlottesville, VA. We took a little inspiration from A Christmas Story and tried to find a Chinese restaurant open for dinner. It took a lot of calling, but we finally found one open and had a delicious Christmas Chinese feast in our hotel room.

We started out our trip by heading up to Monticello. Unfortunately it was raining and super foggy the entire time we were there, but luckily it made for really cool photos. We both thoroughly enjoyed Monticello. It was really cool to see how Jefferson was impacted by his time in Europe and how he drastically altered his designs based on the inspiration he saw all over Europe. My favorite parts were the really cool clock in the first room of the tour, seeing his actual boots in his bedroom, and seeing his pulley door in the main sitting room.
That same day we headed down to see the Great Caverns. I realized I had never been in a cavern before, so I was pretty darn impressed. This is the longest continually operated show cave in America. On the same day Union troops and Confederate troops were given tours of the cave, within hours of each other. You can even see their signatures from their tours still intact. The other really cool thing about this cave is that instead of things growing horizontally they grow vertically, so the have some shapes that are rather unique to this particular cave. They also have a lot of shield shapes which apparently are very uncommon.
Our last day we decided to partake of the famous food in Charlottesville we've heard so much about. Duck Donuts, which we've had before surely did not disappoint again. We did finally get to try the famous Bodo Bagel and man oh man, we're both still dreaming of how delicious those bagels were. Plus it was an amazing 65 degrees that day, so we drove to a park and enjoyed our meal outside while being baffled by the December weather.
I'd highly recommend Charlottesville for a perfect little getaway. Just 2 hours from DC, it's very close to Shenandoah, and has delicious food; which is always the real motivator for us. 

1 comment:

Rachel said...

It's good to 'see' you guys again! Looks like a delightful little getaway!

Blogging tips