Colonial Beach

We decided to go for an outing today. We weren't sure where to go, so after a quick look at the places to visit in Northern VA website we picked Colonial Beach. There wasn't a whole lot of information about the place, but hey, it was listed on the site -it must be worth a visit right?



Wrong! It had a small beach, and that was about it. No cute historic buildings (which you cannot go anywhere in VA without falling over!), not even a good ice cream place... Walking round you got the impression that we'd stumbled across the Red Neck Riviera!! We beat a retreat and drove over to Fredericksburg. Now this place oozes history! Its the site of many civil war battles, its also the place where George Washington grew up. This is where he chopped down the cherry tree and threw a silver dollar across the Rappahanock river.

Around the outskirts of the historic centre are hundreds of shopping malls! Which is where we ended up looking for somewhere for lunch. It had chosen this moment to pour from the heavens! We spent about 15 minutes waiting in the car for the rain to slow from absolutely torrential to heavy in order to run the 20 yards into the restaurant! This should have been an indication of how lunch was going to go... We had to ask for straws for our sodas, napkins, cutlery... Actually Stephen was asking for "cutlery - knives, forks" and getting totally blank looks, so I had to jump in and ask for silverware. I'm now totally bi-lingual...

I guess if you're working in a restaurant you're maybe not going to be Nobel Prize material. And I guess this is the same in the UK too...but I still maintain that its not a great leap from "water" to "wadder", or forks to silverware. SURELY its possible to work it out??!!!

Colonial Beach from the pier