First day in Williamsburg

We took advantage of the opportunity to sleep in a bit after spending so much time in a car. The Good Mr. Dr. and La Suegra had to go officially check us in so that we wouldn't be kicked out. As usual, they tried to entice us to sit through a sales pitch to upgrade to this or that. We learned our lesson over the last couple of years. Our time is more important to us than the little bit of money they give us for the opportunity to tell them that we have no money to spend.

We started the day at Colonial Williamsburg where we got our passes, bought tickets for the ghost tour for Monday night and took a quick bus tour around the site. We also signed up to play the Lion and the Unicorn quest. We'll start that tomorrow. We'll play as a team, but I suspect that The Banana and I will be the main players. We spent the evening going over our instructions and the map. Should be fun.

We had lunch at a College Delly on the campus of the College of William and Mary. I had one of the best roast beef sandwiches ever. From there, we headed out to Historic Jamestowne.

This is a National Park site. We attended a tour, which was really a talk given by Miles Bond, a Park Service guy. He basically told the story of Jamestowne and how what happened here led to the institutionalization of slavery.

The short story is that the early colonists (not the first ones that died of starvation) were here to make money for the company that sent them here. They tried to develop several industries including glassmaking, tar, lumber and soap. But it was tobacco that was the real real money maker. Around the time tobacco industry began to take off, the migration of European laborers began to drop off. Slavery became the way to maintain profits. What's really interesting, however, was that that before the institutionalization of slavery, imported Africans and Afro-Caribbean peoples were able to eventually become free-men, with the same ability to own property (including slaves). However, as slavery became racialized, it was not safe to be a property owning free black here. The lucky ones were able to sell their land and move north. The unlucky ones lost all that they had accumulated.

After Jamestowne, we went to take a tour and do a tasting at the Williamsburg Winery. The tour was interesting, although it could have been done better. What was interesting about the wines was that the reds were actually very good. Virginia's climate is a bit better for whites than reds but we ended up only purchasing reds. The lucky ones who will be able to come to our wine and beer tasting on July 15 (hint hint) will be able to try these out.

We ended the night at a really neat restaurant called Food for Thought. On each of the tables are cards from various games with trivia questions, conversation questions, and "what would you do" type questions. We discovered that The Banana has a better sense of geography than she gave herself credit for. We spent much of the evening talking about all kinds of things like what does it mean to be a good friend and what made one of those questions sexist.

We all agreed that our first day was a really good one.