Mariners' Museum

This morning, we made our way to the Mariners' Museum in Newport News, Virginia. This was a very cool excursion, and one we highly recommend.

But first, we made a stop in Williamsburg at The Gazebo for breakfast. Erin was a little shaky about this place at first, despite my research telling me it would be good for pancakes. It looks like a discarded Rax restaurant from the 80's, or perhaps a Hardee's. And the only decor is a large gazebo in the middle of the restaurant, but the food made up for the lack of ambiance. I had banana and pecan pancakes, and they had just the right amount of sweetness. They also served local sausage and bacon, which was very tasty.

After The Gazebo, we headed for the Mariners' Museum, 25 minutes away. The primary feature of this museum is a wing devoted to the story and recent discovery of Civil War era ironclad, the USS Monitor. Erin and I are both pretty much history illiterate (this trip has been full of "Is that Civil or Revolutionary?" type questions), which I find highly embarrassing for both of us. The older I get, the more I feel this situation needs some attention, but alas. But we all learned a lot from this display. Plus it was highly interactive and very exciting, even for Grant.

After the museum, we drove along the western bank of the James River. I had read that Bacon's Castle was worth a stop. (We had learned about Bacon's Rebellion on a prior stop in the trip.) After a fairly dull drive, we finally arrived at Bacon's Castle. As we pulled up the drive, I asked Erin what it would be worth to get a tour. "Not much" was her reply, and alas, I missed out on seeing any of Bacon's artifacts. The house did look lovely though.

While driving towards Williamsburg, Erin managed to injure herself with a Dum Dum sucker. Somehow she managed to bite off part of the pop, leaving a very sharp edge on the remaining portion, with which she promptly cut her lip and chin. And I'm not talking a small cut, but one large enough to turn her lip purple and leave a visible vertical gash on her chin. As she mopped up the resulting blood, I informed her that in a way, she was a Dum Dum cannibal. A few minutes later, she begin trying to injure me.

After taking the ferry back over to Jamestown(e), we landed back in Williamsburg. For dinner, we ventured out to a very good Chinese/Mongolian/Thai/Japanese buffet. Normally this wouldn't be our stop while on vacation, but Chinese food sounded good, so we checked online for the best place locally, and voila. This place was very interesting, because they had a lot of Thai stuff on the buffet, which was nice. Grace slurped up her first noodles since we came back to the U.S., and she seemed highly excited by the experience.

After dinner, Grace had a diaper blowout which required a lot of laundry and household cleaners. She's happy as a clam, but my gosh, if dinner did to me what it does to her, I might actually lose some weight.

Tomorrow we're off to Virginia Beach and Norfolk, where we'll be hooking up for dinner with my cousin. We're looking forward to it!

And P.S., there are no pictures because yours truly forgot the camera...such is life.