Playing Tourist in Richmond

This was last Saturday, sorry for the long delay. Most of my blog fans seem to binge ready anyways, so you won't mind too much.

Last Saturday we decided to get out of the house and explore some. We didn't want to spend too much money. I really wanted some photos from Richmond. I am going to make Thank You cards to send back home, so many of our friends and relatives gave us going away gifts.

We started the day by going to the South of the James Farmer's Market. It was pretty busy, and parking was crazy. It was mostly white patrons and farmers. Obviously I've been volunteering and learning a lot about access to food. So it was really obvious that our  neighborhood is pretty much half black and half white, but the market did not reflect the entire city.

We were pretty disappointed in the selection. All the farmers had the same options: squash, peppers, some lettuce or micro greens, onions, peaches. I know there is a fair amount of Vietnamese people in the area and a few other minorities. I guess they don't own land? There were no Asian farmers at the market, which was really sad. So the options were not as diverse as we are used to. There were lots of choices in soap and things. There were also a more food trucks than at our markets. We got really fresh, delicious limeade.

It was in the low 90's. The farmers market in a parking lot at a park, so even the locals were complaining about how hot it was. So that was a challenge for us.

Tanner had packed us a lunch, so we wanted to stop and eat somewhere. We were driving along a road that parallels the river, on the south side. We pulled into one parking lot, to discover there wasn't really access to the river. So we tried another. It was a little hike, across a pedestrian overpass that crosses the train tracks, then down.  Great views.

The access was to the dry rocks. This part of the river has ended up in a channel, with some rapids. There is a famous island, Belle Isle. Then on the other side of the island is a field of rocks, with some pieces of river running through them. The water is low right now, so it was even more exposed. A lot of people passed us, walking over to Belle Isle. We just found a nice spot and hung out. It was so hot we decided not to explore too much this time.

There are a few abandoned buildings on Belle Isle, mostly mills and power plants, that kind of thing. From here you can see the city a little, a freeway bridge and the old railway is a pedestrian/bike bridge. 

We also saw a little lizard! He is on the website for the James River Park System, he is the mascot.

The parks look great. There is a long hiking trail. Also a mountain bike trail. We saw lots of locals, families and tourists. There is also flat water canoeing and kayaking, and white water kayaking.

We then drove up to the north side of the river. Tanner drove me past Brown's Island and some other sites. Some other tourist attractions we might visit later.

We decided to walk around the state capital. I wanted photos in front of it.

This is a epic monument. George Washington is the on the horse. Then there are five or six founding fathers of Virginia standing. Then some sitting angle type ladies, which represented different Virginian values

Tanner for scale 

The girl in front was a teenager who organized other students to walk out of their school, her case became one of four that turned into Brown vs the Board of Education. So this was a four sided monument, to their efforts, including her pastor, lawyers and others

Governor's mansion. It is not the oldest Governor's mansion, but it is the oldest one that is still in use

Virginia State Capital 

Under this hill is the visitor's center 

But when we went in the visitor center we discovered not only is open on Saturdays, but they offer free tours. We love tours! So we took that.

The building is in fantastic shape. They have put a ton of effort into keeping it up. They also dug up the entire hill in front, and put in the visitor center, then put the lawn back. They did this before the White House decided to do the same thing.

Our tour guide was great. She really had a southern accent. She obviously liked her job. We learned a lot about the building, how it has changed over the years. They are really proud that Thomas Jefferson designed the building, even though it was not built to his designs right from the beginning.

The top one is John Smith, a good likeness. He is a still a hero of Virginia, for organizing the colony, so they didn't all starve to death. Below is a Native Lady, they know she is not Pocahontas, even though that is who the artist says is in the painting

Yorktown, where we won the Revolutionary War, is also in Virginia

Copy of a copy

Awesome reconstruction of the original model that Jefferson made, what he wanted the state capital to look like

Best likeness of George Washington. 

I have been to Monticello, and loved it. It reminded me of that visit, and I can't wait to take Tanner there.

We then went and parked and walk up and down Carytown. I didn't really take photos. We were tired, hot and grumpy by this point. We can go back and take more photos another day. It is similar to the Ave, mixed with Fremont maybe. But smaller, all the neighborhoods here are smaller. There are second hand clothes store, then high end, designer home decor shops. There are a few fine dining restaurants, and the best, cheap gyros in Richmond.

Sweet Frog! We tried one last week on Friday I guess? We had been running errands all day, so we stopped and got some frozen yogurt. It is just as good as the options back home
 

We ended up bickering. We couldn't pick a place for dinner, and the one place we wanted to try had a line. We gave up and got back in the car.

We ended up in Shockoe Bottom. That neighborhood is like Belltown or Pioneer Square. Some really old buildings, but mixed in with some of the downtown business towers. We went to an Irish themed bar. It was supposed to have good beer options.

I got a Killian's Red on draft! That was exciting. Tanner got a cider, poor choice, it was like juice. I have no idea what he was thinking. The food options were not inspiring, so we just got happy hour appetizers. The decor was really Irish. But the food options were not, and Tanner was not impressed with the Irish whisky selection. We won't be going back there unless someone else picks it. Though they do have live music sometimes, which might be fun.


Then we went home and basically fell asleep on the cough at 8 pm. We really pack a lot in when we do things like this. Going to have to take it slower. But I got a few cute photos!

Move in Day!

This was yesterday, which seems crazy. I am so tired. We keep getting super hungry and dehydrated before we realize and then being grump at each other.

It was a nerve wracking day. We took the Subaru off the trailer, and the trailer off the truck. We parked them both in the back of the parking lot at our hotel, which we were now officially checked out of. So that was a little sketch, but we didn't really have a choice.

We took this photo just in case this was the last time we ever saw the Subaru

We stopped on the way into town to rent a hand truck from U Haul. So that was a little funny, driving up to U Haul in the Penske truck.

We drove over to the apartment building. Only to realize the leasing office is five minutes away in another building. We drove over there and finally met TC, our leasing agent, who Tanner has been emailing with for about three weeks now. They let us know that you are supposed to get your keys at noon. It was then about 9:30. No one had told us that, and I was super annoyed, but trying not to let it show. It was probably a detail in the lease we missed. TC called the maintenance guy, who drove over our keys early. He also drove over to the building we are in and showed us around a little.

It was okay to just park against the building, kind of taking up a lot of the little parking lot. So we started moving stuff in. Tanner remembered to take a few photos of the empty apartment.

From the living room into the bedroom, those are folding door with glass. The bedroom is bigger than the living room. Those are the only windows, the two in the bedroom

Weird view, from where the living room furniture will be. The kitchen is super depressing. 

We only took one small break for breakfast/lunch. I walked around the block and found a place that served pizza, subs, and gyros that was open.

Sitting in the truck eating. It was in shade most of the day, which was nice. I found out today that I got sunburned wearing a tank top. All I did was move our stuff and walk to get lunch. I am going to have to be more careful

Moving went really well. Between Tanner taking up boxes on the hand truck, and me carrying up any odd shaped or sized things we got a good rhythm.  We even used the hand truck for most of the furniture. Everything fit in the elevator, including the mattresses, shelves and couch.

The building seems fine. The hallways are wide and hardwood. The elevator is noisy but works well enough. It is a locked building and people seem to make sure the doors close. It is right downtown, but downtown is smaller and kind of coming back from some economic depression. So we can walk some places, a post office, library, lots of places to eat, and some corner markets. It is much quieter than my place in Boston, about the same as our place in Seattle.

The apartment smells like varnish, they just redid the floors. The layout is a little strange, but not bad. You can get into the one bathroom from either the bedroom or living room. The bathroom is big enough and has a tub. But no towel rack. There is no linen cupboard. There is just one closet in the whole place, a jumbo one in the bedroom.

The bedroom is bigger then our old place. It has the only two windows. We do get a lot of light in the bedroom. We are on the fifth floor and there are no tall buildings for a few blocks. The view is not really much. They are doing construction on a building we can watch. The windows do open, one has a screen. I think there is room to set up my quilting stuff better than the old place.

The living room is smaller. Even after unpacking half the day today, we are not sure how to lay out the furniture. The ceilings in the living room and bedroom are really high, like 12 feet tall. But the actual ceiling is a really ugly insulation looking stuff.

The kitchen is tiny. Tiny dishwasher and stove, really tiny. The ceiling in there is a drop ceiling. It gets no natural light, and the light in there is fluorescent. There is half as much storage as our old kitchen. It has one counter that I think you are supposed to be able to eat at, but it is table height, not bar height. So it won't be useful food preparation space. We are hoping the small appliances can go there.

The AC works well. The fans both work and are really nice too. We don't think they have recycling, but we need to ask.


We finished getting it all up to the apartment between three and four. This gave us time to get the hand truck returned. Go all the way back to the hotel to pick up the trailer. Then we had to fill up the truck, and find Burford's Auto Shop. Tanner got so angry. People kept blocking traffic, and the gas station was a really tight fit, we had to double back through traffic because we couldn't u-turn in the truck with the trailer still attached. I followed Tanner to the Auto Shop that was taking our Penske truck.

Done! Such a relief not to have the truck anymore.

We sort of just drove around then in the Subaru. Tanner got a well deserved Slurpee, which I forgot to take a photo of before it was empty. We needed groceries so we stopped at an Asian grocery store we passed. It was gross. They didn't have some Sichuan ingredients I need, but they did have a few things we wanted to have, we got miso and kimchi. I am so upset that years of built up condiments were left behind, oh well. We stopped at Kroger and got the rest of the things we needed.

Yummy sweet chewy rice cake thing 

This is not trash, I wanted to take a photo of our Asian groceries, I was tired and sucked at it

We unpacked just enough to be able to make the bed and take showers.

Then we went across the street to dinner. There is a restaurant called Perly's. It is a contemporary Jewish deli. I had a Jewbano, a deli twist on a Cuban, and Tanner had a Reuben. We had homemade pickles, dill potato salad and homemade chips. It was really good. There were so many things on the  menu we want to try. But the eating out budget is going to be too small to go back again soon. They have at least seven kinds of homemade pickles every day. They have fishboards, which is a platter of smoked, pickled or kippered fish, and pickles, bagels and other little snacks to eat together. They have fancy hot dogs with all kinds of sauces. The decor was comfy, kitschy, but not over the top. So that is fun, to have that nearby. We did not take photos though, so when we go back I will take pictures.

We can't find the wall charger for Tanner's phone, so have been conserving batteries, my phone was left in Colorado, and no internet yet. So last night we couldn't check in very well with our families.

Off to bed! Tanner missed being able to play Destiny.

I will post more photos of our place as we put it together.

Day Seven - Ashland, KY to Richmond, VA

Our last driving day.

We woke up early, the sun was shining into the Subaru. We decided to drive for a while before stopping. We went through the border with West Virginia. There was a lot of uphill, we never got to a very high elevation.

Our friends got us a gift card for Starbucks to use on our road trip, so I posted this photo to Facebook and tagged them

We stopped at a Starbucks so I could try to get caught up on blogging.

Then later we stopped at Tudor's Biscuit World. It is a fast food restaurant that only exists in West Virginia. It was fun to try. The biscuits were very delicious. The toppings were things like shaved ham and American cheese slices. They had the same preformed hash brown patties like McDonald's, but jumbo. We definitely heard some accents, and everyone called me love or dear. It was cute.

We were on the edge of town in the largest city in West Virginia, and still down the street was a steep wooded hill. It was so beautiful, but really rural

It was a really beautiful drive. The drive down out of the mountains was a little steep.

It was very exciting getting to Virginia. It was making me very stressed out and anxious about random things.

The Welcome Center and rest stops are super nice.

We hit just a little bit of traffic as we got closer to the city. The interstate we were on, 64, goes right through Richmond, so we took that same road all day.

Cutest gas station, it had a McDonald's in it, all the people were eating ice cream cones on the porch

We thought we could stay with friends, but they just bought a house outside Richmond and are in the process of moving here from where they live right now in Texas. So we stayed in a hotel right off the interstate outside the city. It was okay. It did have a nice big parking lot, with room for the truck.

We were so tired at this point. We wanted to talk to dinner, but it turns out the major roads in the suburbs have no sidewalks or crosswalks, like some even worse version of Alderwood. So the only thing close enough to walk to was Bob Evans, very similar to Denny's. We had dinner. I was supposed to blog, but instead I went to bed before 9;00pm