Richmond, Virginia – Part 2 – It's a wanderful life, so it is

Richmond part 2 was just more of the same as part 1, and that was no bad thing. Lots of walks along the river and through the city. As mentioned before, we visited Carytown several times as it’s a nice, quirky part of town that still feels as though it’s set in the America of the 50s or 60s.

Niall left to go back home at the beginning of our last week in Richmond. The poor soul had been historied and cemetried out not too long after he arrived, so we saved a lot of museums and final resting places for that final week. We spent several hours in the Civil War Museum, which is located in a former Ironworks and was just brilliant. It is beautifully presented and allowed us geeks to soak up as much information as our old, tired wee brains could take. Definitely recommend this one.

We also visited the White House of the Confederacy, where we got a tour of the house Jefferson Davis, the former president of the Confederate States of America lived during the civil war. It was intriguing to be in the same room that Abraham Lincoln (yes, that Abraham Lincoln) had enjoyed a wee cup of tea just a few days before he was murdered at Ford’s Theatre in Washington DC. Talk about history coming to life!

We visited Hollywood Cemetry and the Vigina War Memorial. The latter one we almost didn’t bother as it looked kind of lame from the outside, but boy were we glad we did. It was fascinating and commemorated Virginians killed in all conflicts since World War II. In addition to the many exhibits, it had a cinema where you could watch short films about specific events or times in history. The flag shown below was made out of a bed sheet and some smuggled red and blue crayons at Omori Prison Camp in Japan during WWII. When the US marines liberated the camp in 1945 it was held aloft with both a Union Flag and a Dutch flag made by the prisoners since all three flags featured the same colours and could be made using the smuggled crayons.

One of the days we attempted to cross part of the river over the dry rocks. Ultimately it was impassable for us at such an advanced age and we had to turn back. We could maybe have succeeded 30 years ago but we didn’t fancy an extended stay in an orthopedic hospital. And anyway, we weren’t insured for that.

It was Halloween while we were in Richmond. The houses all over the city were decorated in the weeks leading up to it. It’s a big thing here and we had several trick or treaters visit on the night itself for some candy. It was fun to participate in this way, but frankly a little bit weird because it was 28 degrees at the end of October!