Day 46 - Now't Much Really

From – Virginia Beach (VA)
To – Richmond (VA – it’s the capital don’t you know)
Via - Newport News (it's a place, not a shop)

Today’s Photos - http://www.flickr.com/photos/32017704@N03/sets/72157611491521464/

Like an old person, I have decided to spread the 150 mile drive back to Washington over three days. I’m pretty sure that Ian Botham could walk the distance quicker but I don’t need to be there ‘til Monday and there seems to be a couple of places worth a visit on the way so why not. Now some days I sit down to write this thing, look back through the photos (my memory isn’t what it was) and feel quite intimidated at the amount of stuff I want to cover. Today is not that sort of day. Due to a combination of lethargy/laziness, crappy weather and mild intimidation, I didn’t really do much worth commenting on. But that’s not going to stop me…

Let’s see. Woke up in Virginia Beach and went for one last nostalgic walk along the seafront. I even took final photos from the balcony of the room like I had stayed there a month. Hit the road with the usual tactic of stopping if something took my fancy. As it turns out, there were quite a few things that stood out but none that could be easily visited with a dog. There were several NASA signs but I haven’t been able to work out exactly what it was. There’s an Air & Space Centre in Langley, VA but that’s no where near where I was. Shame as Molly has always harbored ambitions of following in Laika’s paw-prints as being an AstroDog. The other thing of note was Colonial Williamsburg – the mother of all reenactment villages. After the fun and games we had in Plymouth Plantation (“most banal question”, “least relevant question” and “most questions” competitions), I would have been all over visiting here if my professional tourist partner was around but, alas, I fear that reenactment villages will have to join Hooters on the list of places that you just can’t go to alone.

My cheap hotel/motel experiment is still ongoing whilst I am on my own so today’s trial was an EconoLodge. I’ll not drag this out – it’s pretty nasty…but only $50 a night. The conclusion I’m coming to with the hotel/motel experiment is that the brand is pretty irrelevant, the quality of the room is almost always perfectly correlated to the cost. The old “you get what you pay for” seems perfectly applicable to the budget hotel world. As a rule, $50 per night gets you a real no frills place with the possibility of wallpaper peeling away at the edges, a bathroom that you wouldn’t want to linger in and I wouldn’t recommend looking down the back of cupboards as they won’t have been cleaned since the end of the Civil War. $70 is usually a pretty comfortable and clean room with a free continental breakfast (i.e. a bunch of bagels next to a toaster) but lacking in space. $90 is about the maximum you can spend on a budget hotel (unless it’s in a big city or next to a big airport) which seems like The Ritz after a few $50 places. Big, clean rooms; staff that aren’t looking at you like they would like to kill you; confidence that the bathrooms don’t contain wildlife and less need to look through the spy-glass when leaving the room to ensure no-one is waiting outside with an anvil. La Quinta is my favourite $90 place, Days Inn is my favourite $70 place and Days Inn wins again in the $50 category. Eating America – Experimenting With Disgusting Hotels So You Don’t Have To…

My hotel was about 4 miles from downtown Richmond so I decided to walk Molly there but, about 300 yards into the walk, I figured that the odds of me getting mugged were high enough make me turn back…sharpish. Whilst the majority of Richmond actually seems pretty nice (Monument Avenue has some seriously nice houses), the bit around my hotel is seriously run down. So we turned it into a driving tour. First stop, the aforementioned Monument Avenue which contains statues of the major Southern heroes from the Civil War (there were plenty of battles around this area) and…wait for it…Arthur Ashe! Apparently the erection of his statue was controversial because a) it’s hardly in-keeping with the war hero theme and b) allegedly he hated his home town. A nice enough time to drive round but the find of the day was Billy’s BBQ – a stand alone institution. No ribs or brisket here, just minced beef or minced pork sandwiches served in a soft roll with ‘slaw and a little pot of vinegary bbq sauce. Obviously when faced with the beef or pork decision, I chose both (they were pretty small and just $3 each) and they were both mighty fine.

Given my general lethargy, the easy thing to do in the evening was to go to the movies. Went to see 007 in the Quantum of Solace which wasn’t bad. There were a few murmurings in the crowd at the numerous anti-American comments that M made which made me giggle but nothing interesting beyond that.

Wow, how did I manage to string out such an uneventful day for so long? Stay tuned for more lengthy drivel tomorrow as I head to Fredericksburg and buy a coffee.