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It was another early start from Charleston at 5:45am to catch the bus out. I wasn't very sorry to leave. I had to change buses twice to get to Williamsburg, Virginia. I met some interesting people on the journey though. The first one was a truck driver who was making his way to Dover, Delaware to pick up a truck at 2:30am when he got there and he was hoping they left it outside the gates. The second was a college student who was studying criminal justice at a Virginia college and was returning home for Mother's Day in Massachusetts - a 16 hour trip. He said his ambition was to join the police force and get into the FBI - I thought it was great he had such high ambitions.
The third was a middle aged guy who was trying to get from Ohio to Virginia and it had taken him three days (about two days longer than normal) because twice he had got to a bus that didn't have a driver so he had to wait hours for the next scheduled one. He showed me pictures of his kids - he was obviously a very proud father. He was trying to get to see his kids, including five year old Gracie, but he said because of the delays he would only get to see her in the evening. He had supposed to be spending the day with her because it was Mother's Day on Sunday. (I assumed a divorce was involved but didn't ask.) He reminded me of Steve Martin's character from Planes, Trains & Automobiles. I've not yet suffered the counterpart of John Candy's Del Griffith though.
I learned from these encounters why people would take the bus. Every person I've talked to has said they hate going by bus. For example, Jordan, the college kid, told me his bus ticket, booked two weeks in advance cost about $45, but the equivalent plane ticket would cost $100 if booked a month or more in advance. So there is a massive difference in price - the flip side being that the journey will take 16 hours instead of just two by plane.
My journey was 'only' 12 hours to Williamsburg, Virginia though. When I got there I had booked a Super 8 just one mile from the bus station and the main attraction of Colonial Williamsburg. I think I must be getting fitter because I barely felt the one mile walk with my 50 pound (23 kg) load. Not that I wasn't glad to put it down when I got there!
I lucked out at the motel because I got a 10% discount coupon from reception for an Italian restaurant across the road. However the yin-yang of life ensured that to compensate me for this I got lousy service at the restaurant.
The next day I walked one mile down the road to Colonial Williamsburg. I kept seeing smartly dressed families on the road and I wondered whether they were heading to church. After all I am in America and they have more devotion to religion than back in England. But then I kept passing buildings with school-like titles and sometimes the phrase "William & Mary" that sounded vaguely familiar to me. Then I saw a marquee out back of a grand building. I was starting to think, given all these clues and the ages of the kids in these family units, that it was a university-related thing. What finally clinched it for me was some guy asking me, outside the Colonial Williamsburg ticket office, "Do you know where the graduation is taking place?" He was referring to the one at William & Mary - the second oldest university in the US after Harvard.
You don't need a ticket to walk around the historic area but to go into any of the buildings you do. I had a few hours to kill and couldn't imagine how I'd do that by just looking at the outside of buildings down a one mile stretch of road. The ticket cost me $43, which is by far the most I've spent so far on a single attraction. It did grant me additional access to the Governor's Palace though.
The first thing I did was get the bus to the main visitor's centre to watch the introductory video. It was not what I was expecting though. I expected a modern documentary style video. What I saw was a half hour long 1953 movie. I got to learn about the importance of Williamsburg and Virginia during Revolutionary times and I was glad to see it wasn't just a tenuous link for the sake of tourism. Williamsburg, as the capital of Virginia as it was then (it's now Richmond), was actually an important place for the discussion of treasonous acts against the British crown and the spark that lit the fire of the independence movement.
The vast majority of the buildings are reconstructions built on the original surviving foundations but some are original from the 17th century. I went inside half a dozen and got tours of the larger ones and talked to the costumed guides. The buildings that are open are identified by a Union Jack outside them except there was something not quite right about it. It had the blue background and the red horizontal cross and white diagonal crosses. It was missing the red diagonal cross. From my flag memory this must mean we were missing Wales in those days since it contained the crosses of St George (England) and St Andrew (Scotland). According to the movie when independence was voted for the people took town the Union Jack from the roof of the buildings and replaced it with a Union Jack-and-stripes combination flag. I'd never seen one of those before but it was flying over the Capitol and you can roughly make it out in my photos.
I had to tear myself away at 3pm when I needed to get my bus. I wished I had longer there though to see more of the buildings and, more so, to see the staged productions that were going to run through the rest of the afternoon. I could hear cannon fire as I sat outside the bus station at 5pm and I assumed that was from the cannon I had seen on the green beside the courthouse where one of the productions ended up after a small group was going to march from the capitol down there, inviting the audience to march along.
This was the first place so far where I have felt I didn't have enough time. (This is different to places where I could have spent more time such as New York.) But I liked it and would definitely go back and spend a whole day there.
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