Anniversary Trip to Williamsburg, Virginia Part 2.
Did you miss the first part of our trip? Be sure to read this post to get caught up!
On our second full day in Williamsburg, we took our time getting ready for the day and just kept things super chill which was wonderful.
With four kids life is always rush-rush-rush so just being able to slow our pace on our trip away was so great!
Our bed and breakfast
It was GORGEOUS.
A fun fact about me is that I attended Florida State University my freshman year of college (then I met Zach and transferred and graduated from Valdosta State). I LOVED going to FSU.
I lived on campus and never took any of it for granted. I loved walking past all the old, beautiful buildings. Walking in the shade of the many beautiful trees. I just LOVED IT.
And walking around William and Mary brought back all those same feelings. I always felt so grateful that I got to attend school at such a beautiful campus and the whole time we were walking around William and Mary I kept saying how I hope the kids who attend there really appreciate it too!
The College of William and Mary is the second oldest institution of higher learning in the country. It was founded in 1693! Thomas Jefferson was even a student.
How cool is that?!?! Harvard is the oldest college in the country and it’s def on my list to visit too 😉
We visited the famous sunken garden and had to say hey to Thomas Jefferson!
Crim Dell is another must-visit spot at William and Mary. It’s a little pond with a beautiful (and high sloped) bridge.
It’s a spot where students believe love blossoms so we had to share a kiss. It cracks me up at our height difference when we kiss. Look how I have to strain my neck haha!
We enjoyed our walk and took a rest on some steps in front of one of the buildings before heading over to do more exploring in Colonial Williamsburg!
Zach wanted to do a bit more touring (and since we bought the two-day pass we figured, why not?) so we headed over to the Randolph House.
This house was part of our ghost tour and we were both curious to see more of it.
Leading up to that morning all of our tours and experiences in Colonial Williamsburg had been very brief – 20 to 30 min max. We were pressed a bit on time and felt SO BAD when the Randolph House tour took much longer than we’d anticipated and we had to scoot out during it.
The Randolph House was built in 1717. Randolph was a huge driving force towards America’s independence but he died in October of 1775 – John Hancock signed the Declaration of Independence in his place!
We headed back to change before our big plans that afternoon and stopped to grab a quick lunch at the little cafe next door to our bed and breakfast.
This year we decided not to do gifts for our anniversary and instead, Zach booked us a FULL spa package at a highly rated and reviewed Spa in Williamsburg!
We had a FULL afternoon planned at the Williamsburg Salt Spa. We did every service they offered! The prices were reasonable and we both agreed that having a relaxing afternoon in the middle of our trip was PERFECTION.
Our first service was to spend about 30 minutes in the salt sauna. We just sat in together and could feel the heat as the temperature rose higher and higher and we were getting our sweat on 😉
Sidenote but they also need some larger sized slippers 😉
After our sauna time we were separated and lead into individual rooms for our float tank experience.
At first glance, I felt a LOT of anxiety in my chest. I don’t like small spaces and couldn’t fathom SHUTTING THE LID on myself in this pod thing!
It was a full hour time slot and once I actually got to looking at the pod I felt a little more comfortable.
I ended up going for it 🙂 I even shut the lid all the way!
The tank was filled with salt water which allows you to float. I shut the lid and tried to relax the best I could.
It took me a LONG TIME to feel comfortable. It was a lot of pressure on my head and neck. Zach told me later that we were supposed to use a foam ring behind our heads. Oops.
I struggled so much that I even tried laying on my stomach a bit.
I finally was able to push through the pressure on my neck and head and just practiced my Bradley Method technique for breathing and relaxing.
Once I relaxed it was neat how I was floating and perfectly centered in the pod! I was even able to fall asleep and get a nice nap!
It’s not something I’d want to do again. Zach agreed and he didn’t even stay in the full hour because he got bored 😉 But it was a super cool experience to try once!
Following our salt soak we had to shower off fully to remove all of the salt (see the spray bottle in the pod? It’s to spray your eyes in case some of the salt water gets in them…which it did for me ha!)
Then we headed into our couples massage which was another hour of a full body massage.
Following that we then got dressed and were able to spend an hour in the salt cave.
Y’all this thing is SO COOL. It’s over 15,000 tons of imported therapeutic salt from Poland and the Himalayas. Supposedly just sitting in the room, relaxing, and breathing in the salt air has a TON of health benefits.
We got lucky and no one else happened to have booked the Salt Cave at the same time we did!
It was very relaxing. Zach got bored pretty quickly again 😉 And I fell asleep again #shocker.
If y’all know me at all then you know I’m very gullible. Or I guess a better way to say it is that I’m quick to trust people.
So you know I was ALL about this salt cave situation.
I ended up buying a bunch of their Himalayan salts to bring home for our family and put together a nice thank you gift for Zach’s mom. She has rheumatoid arthritis and soaks a lot in baths so we thought the salts would be perfect to help relieve some of her joint pain.
We LOVED our afternoon and it was such a fun, unique experience and SO relaxing!
We headed back to the room and just tossed on some casual clothes to go to dinner across the street from our bed and breakfast.
The restaurant was The Blue Talon and I dare say it was possibly the BEST meal of MY LIFE.
It was FABULOUS.
The creamed corn soup was INCREDIBLE.
We never, ever order a special menu item but the steak special sounded so good and it did not disappoint.
The GÂTEAU BRETON dessert though is something I will crave in my dreams! SO FABULOUS.
I literally ate so much I got sick. No joke. Which I can’t ever remember happening to me! But it was WORTH IT.
The next day was
So we got an uber over to Jamestown, Virginia.
Both Jamestown Settlement and Historic Jamestowne are located in the same general area but are a TWO MILE walk between them. And no transportation is provided because one of the locations is state-funded and one is federally funded. And y’all know how that kinda stuff works.
We decided to see the original Jamestowne first as it’s the real deal. The OG city of our COUNTRY. I mean kinda crucial.
Jamestowne was founded in 1607 by 104 male settlers as the very first settlement in America.
Only 32 of the original 104 survived.
I appreciated that so much of the area was left untouched. There have been a lot of efforts in recent years to do archeological digs in Jamestowne and they are still active today and continue making new discoveries.
It was a bit of a rough situation for me as there were a LOT of bugs and yellow flies since it was so close to the James River. Bugs love me and I was getting bit pretty consistently which made it tough to really appreciate everything…although I’m just a “hit the highlights” kinda history girl anyway 🙂
We first looked through the little museum at the entrance (basically a walk-through) and found Zach’s pizza oven he’s built in our backyard!
We then went outside and explored all of the original settlement.
So a gorgeous spot and so awesome to think about standing on the EXACT land where our country was first founded and where it all began!
Most of the “buildings” are not complete and are either original works or recreated to be exactly how things were.
I was, of course, the most intrigued to learn more about John Smith and Pocahontas. SO interesting to me that she DID marry an Englishman but it wasn’t him! You can learn
It was really interesting to see the places where bodies were found and to learn about how they found cellars and kitchens and over a MILLION artifacts in the area.
The biggest issue for the settlers was the WATER. They were so close to the water level that they had issues with getting drinking water. Most of the sickness deaths were water related.
They also struggled with food. The settlers eventually lived within the walls of the fort due to the Native Americans attacking. If the settlers left the walls of the fort, they’d get killed by the Native Americans. So they starved.
This is the site of the first landing!
We went into this BEAUTIFUL museum which was SO nicely done! I was thankful to be away from the bugs and to have a bathroom 😉
We really enjoyed walking through and learning more about the early settlers and seeing all the artifacts.
We were the MOST interested though in seeing the bodies of a few of the settlers that were discovered.
It’s so awesome how much can be learned about a person from just their bones.
One body that was discovered actually proved that the settlers used cannibalism as a means of survival.
The girl was 14 and died of starvation and then people ate her. Which I mean I honestly am okay with. Desperate times dude. It’s not like they murdered her in order TO eat her. They just needed to survive!
We also got to see one of the first baby teethers! SO weird!
We really enjoyed walking around the museum. It was very well done!
The gift shop was also great and everything was very decently priced. While we were checking out I spotted some earrings and really loved them.
I’m actually not one to buy much when traveling. And something I’ve noticed about myself as I’ve gotten older is that I’m more picky about my purchases. But when I see something I LOVE I know it.
I knew I LOVED the earrings.
We left and I started googling them and realized they ONLY sell them in THAT gift shop and they aren’t available online.
Zach okayed it so I ran back in and bought them 🙂 They are recreation earrings modeled after ones
We got some lunch from the cafe in Historic Jamestowne and y’all it was GOOD. The sweet tea was LEGIT. The pretzel was fabulous and I loved my spinach and artichoke dip!
Once we finished eating we explored the church a bit before leaving Historic Jamestowne!
We walked over a bridge and really enjoyed the swamp area! It was neat to just stand there and watch. Animals were everywhere and if you watched long enough you could see them all moving!
We really didn’t want to walk in the heat the TWO MILES to get to Jamestown Settlement and we also didn’t want to make an Uber driver come there to pick us up to only drive us 2 miles! It just seemed rude.
So we
They were super nice and we told them a lot about Savannah as it’s a town we love and they said they were into visiting historic cities!
Jamestown Settlement is an AWESOME museum and VERY well done and more of a recreation of what Jamestowne was whereas the Historic Jamestown was all very truth driven and is set up as it IS now. I think seeing both is very valuable!
However, if you travel with kids you may want to skip the historic part and go straight to the Settlement portion as it was VERY kid friendly!
The museum portion didn’t allow photography but it was AWESOME. Very interactive and interesting and it was obvious some major money was spent
We then got to explore the recreated portion of the area which was also very detailed and well done.
The Native American area was very interesting. It seemed like their housing was SO MUCH better than the settlers!
They also had ships set up as recreations of the ships the settlers arrived on. It was really crazy to think about all those people crammed in that small of a space for that long of a time period. MONTHS spent on a boat. Only to then arrive
We walked a bit around the recreated fort area but felt like we had enough of the feel from the real deal next door 😉 We also were hoping to have time to head over to Yorktown so we decided to go ahead and leave in order to be able to see that area!
The Uber ride to Yorktown was about 30 minutes from Jamestown. It was a pretty drive and we actually had a really nice driver which made it a better ride!
However, when we got dropped off at Yorktown we were quick to learn that we didn’t plan so well. It turns out that Yorktown is THOUSANDS of miles and a car is REQUIRED to be able to tour the area.
A bit frustrating but we just decided to see what we could see.
If you’re like me and don’t know what Yorktown is…it’s the location of the last major battle in the Revolutionary War.
Washington walked the grounds we were on. He was victorious in the battle at Yorktown which
We did a bit of a tour where they showed us the main areas and walked through the battle a bit.
We went through their museum and watched a video for the history behind Yorktown. I loved seeing the actual TENT that George Washington used in the battle! I mean who thinks during that crazy time to KEEP the TENT?!! Right?
It was also neat to learn that George Washington was actually 6’2″ which was crazy tall for that time period!
Going out to the battlefield was beautiful.
There are gorgeous purple flowers in Yorktown called Yorktown Onions and it’s illegal to pick them!
We were able to catch the last shuttle bus around the town of Yorktown and y’all it’s an ADORABLE and PRECIOUS town!
We kept saying the whole trip that everywhere we went it seemed so EMPTY and like NO ONE was visiting. But I bet money that Yorktown was JAMMED PACKED that weekend.
I bet it’s where everyone goes and stays!
We loved our shuttle ride around the town. We just rode it almost the whole way and our driver was kind enough to stop at the Victory Monument so we could get a picture and learn a bit about the history behind the monument.
It’s been struck by lightning multiple times and had to be rebuilt even at one point.
We had a bit of an issue with the Uber ride back to the bed and breakfast and we waited a good 30 minutes before we were finally IN the ride and then it was a good 30 min drive to GET to the bed and breakfast.
We were both
Just to give you an idea, the owner of our bed and breakfast said there was NO WAY to possibly do everything we did in one day. She said to do Colonial Williamsburg you’d need several days and then a day for EACH Historic Jamestowne, Jamestown Settlement AND Yorktown.
But you can get a lot in when you hit those highlights baby 😉
We had planned to go out for a nice fancy dinner in honor of our anniversary but truly? We were just TIRED and wanted to just HANG OUT.
So that’s what we did! Zach picked up
We had an afternoon flight home and were up and ready plenty early so we just went ahead and went to the airport.
The airport, shocker, was DEAD. As in NO ONE was there. SO. CHILL.
OF COURSE our flight was delayed. OF COURSE. We ended up having to hustle to make our connecting flight in Atlanta and got lucky that it was in the same concourse as our arrival flight!
Once we got to Valdosta? OUR LUGGAGE WASN’T THERE. Ugh.
It turns out there was some issue with ALL flights into Valdosta that day and like every flight would arrive and they’d only have like 6 bags on them.
It took us an extra 45 min to get the bag thing handled and they arrived the next day and were delivered to our door which was great!
It made me SO GLAD that I packed my valuables and essentials in my carry-on. Y’all it’s a MUST DO. I get teased for my
We were still able to scoop up the kids and be home by dinnertime. They’d had an awesome time with G-Mama and Big Papa but we were SO GLAD to be home to them!
I loved all the goodies we got them and they did too!
We got Kye a quill, ink and parchment. Spear a book. And the girls some jewelry making kits!
We truly LOVED our visit to Williamsburg! We don’t plan to go back because we have other historic cities we’d like to visit but we truly LOVED it.
I’ve also enjoyed all the feedback from those who kept up with my Instagram Stories during our trip. SO many of yall mentioned you now want to visit