Road Trip: South - inalnd trip
Day 8: Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - Charlottesville, VA
Weather: . Partly cloudy with a brief shower.
Steps: 10,168 (Steve), 8,931 (Linda)
Drove: 267 miles
We woke to an overnight rain shower.
Today's breakfast was the same as yesterday.
This day was the first day that we departed in the morning for our next destination. Due to the timing - we tried to change our hotel reservation but couldn't - we had to be at Monticello for a 1:00 house tour.
We arrived before 11:00 which gave us time to watch the 17 minute video and walk through the small museum at the visitors center. We shared a chef salad at the café. Afterward we made our way to the house via the shuttle. Monticello (pronounced monti-chello, not monti-sello) was not nearly as big as the excess and opulance that was Biltmore, but it was more relevant and intelligent.
The views from Monticello were, as they were at Biltmore and other mountain locations, spectacular:
We honored the request - again - for no pictures or video of the inside. The outside, however, were a different story:
There were some gardens also, though not as large as at Biltmore. A lot of the flowers were in bloom, which was nice:
There is a weather vane on the house (see the first home image above). Jefferson was clever enough that he
had the wind direction put onto the ceiling of the porch underneath the weather vane so that he could see what
the direction was - without going outside:
There was one area that where we were outside in a semi-enclosed green house like area / porch:
But this area had a (what we found out afterward was) a view into the house. I took a picture
only later to find out that it was part of the library from the in-house tour (the shelves have original
volumes on it). Technically, I did honor the request of no photos inside the house.
There was a small outbuilding where Thomas, his wife and very young child lived while the home was being built:
The property had a very large vegetable garden:
Also on the property is the family graveyard, which in turn contains the grave of Thomas Jefferson:
It was pretty early when we were done with our tour, so we headed out - to a winery. The first one we came
across was this one:
We "elected" to pass it by (we later found out it was indeed associated to the orange former president), and go
to the next one down the road call Blenheim (we later
found out, during the tasting, that it was Dave Matthew's Winery [yes, THE Dave Matthews, the musician]).
We were somewhat misdirected trying to get back from the winery. It wasn't that bad as we were listening to a
book-on-CD. But it was 75 miles we didn't need to drive. We did, however, happen to come across
what looked like a still-functioning drive-in theater:
We had a nice dinner at the Downtown Mall. The Downtown Mall is an eight to ten block outside shopping area that included shops
and mostly restaurants. The restaurants had al fresco seating in the middle of the mall (walkway) or eating within the restaurant.
We wound up at a location called Himalayan Fusion.
We had the lamb samosa for appetizer (no image), the chicken momos, and tanduri platter (a sampling of tanduri chicken, lamb and salmon) with rice:
The restaraunt was quiet - but it was very early - and cozy.
We headed back to our last night at a hotel during our vacation.