Monticello is the house of Thomas Jefferson. It is a rather small house though it is quite a fine abode. There are a great many people who visit Monticello, and if you do not know my opinion on people it is thus: They tend to diminish my enjoyment. Of places and things. I am also displeased by hasty, strict tour guides who disallow photography.

Colonial Williamsburg is a crap-load of history coming at you all at once. The best thing about Colonial Williamsburg is that the buildings are air-conditioned. Though perhaps my opinion has been colored by the fact that we went it was a million degrees centigrade out. Our strength was drained by early in the after-noon.



So one of the more interesting things about Williamsburg is that they have these little skits and speeches on the street throughout the afternoon regarding the Revolutionary War, and they attempt to get the crowd involved, yelling 'woo' and 'yay' and especially 'huzzah' (often in triplicate), but it's kind of hard to get excited because we all know how it ends. Yeah, OK, I think the Declaration of Independence is alright, but I've read it before and I'm rather ambivalent in my feelings towards King George. Not excited. Sorry. You get a pity cheer.


"Simon says everyone who loves American history look left." In fact, they are looking at Mr. Benedict Arnold. This man seems to be rather unpopular for some reason. I wasn't really paying attention.


"No, you can't 'look at' one of the muskets."

Weird thing I wish I had a picture of but didn't: I saw a young lady ask a colonial actor to hold a large zucchini--which was wearing a nose and glasses--while she video'd him. She said it was "traveling the world". He called it "a prodigious squash" and asked if she was going to eat it after she was done. I employed Google to try and find evidence of this quest (and maybe even see myself on video; I was standing right next to the guy at the time), but no luck. Nothing would have made me happier than to read of this intrepid squash's adventure.

Panorama-rama continues:

Virginia Beach is a quite pleasant place and we enjoyed perfect beach weather. The ocean is too salty. They should really do something about that. It's disgraceful. As you can see we had a commanding view of the Dairy Queen (which did receive our patronage). There is an air force base near the beach, and so fighter jets like to fly over all the time. It's like we're fighting a war or something. I got just sun-burned enough to feel satisfied. I saw a shark's egg and I touched a jellyfish and some girls showed us how we could dig little burrowing crabs out of the wet sand but I never got the hang of it. Then end.