Today we stayed in Williamsburg and the big trip of the day is down the road to "Colonial Williamsburg".
This is a part of town where a lot of historic buildings have either been restored or replicated.
Of course they concentrate on the Revolution, so of course there are cannons:
On some of the buildings you just get a sign explaining the significance, eg like this one:
but others are fully operating shops or work areas. Many of them are doing work as they would have back in the late 1700's - for example, there's a working forge (we saw them making nails that are then used in the maintenance and restoration of buildings on site) and a working gunsmith.
The gunsmith will make a replica Long Rifle for you for about $US20,000 - apparently because the technology is pre 1898 it's regarded as a curio and not a weapon in the USA, but I don't think that would wash in Australia if we tried to import one :-)
The workers will also talk and answer questions about their task - for example, Paul had a long talk with the gunsmith.
We saw the Governor's Palace - somehow Australian Governors never got to have Palaces???
This sign that we saw at the palace:
(I'm sure I took a photo of the actual landau, but it vanished somehow) reminded me of something the tour director said earlier. Apparently when the Queen came here, she stayed at one of the hotels in Colonial Williamsburg, and they had to paint her bedroom blue for her. I had no idea she was so precious!
Anyway, back to today. We also had short tours of some of the buildings - for example the Public Jail.
Overall, it was quite an interesting place but quite large (so a lot of walking) and really hot - over 80 degrees Fahrenheit and over 80% humidity as well. We had a choice of being picked up and brought back to the hotel at either 2:30pm or 5:30 pm, and we were happy to come back at 2:30. I noticed all the Aussies on the tour did the same - and really, since this is all about the Revolutionary War period, you can see why the Americans and Poms would be interested, but it's not deeply significant to an Aussie.
The afternoon was quiet - we used the opportunity to get some washing done so with any luck we might be able to avoid paying too much for laundry on the Oasis of the Seas.
As a side issue here, I think we undertipped the waitress at the Cracker Barrel restaurant tonight - not a lot, just a few cents, but it leads me to the whole point of tipping. I understand the whole 'when in Rome, do as the Romans do' thing. And, I know Aussies (among others) have a reputation for not tipping. I'm sure it's true that some Aussies don't tip even though they know it's expected. I'm equally sure that others don't tip - or don't get it right - simply because it's so damned complicated and inconsistent. You don't tip anyone at McDonalds. Sometimes you tip the server, other times you add it to the credit card receipt - it just goes on and on. It's such an astoundingly inefficient way of spreading the wealth, hidden under the pretence that you're tipping for good service when in fact it's about as 'optional' as paying the State taxes that they add to the bill here. I will be SO glad to get home - I'm going to go to the supermarket and do a stack of shopping just so that I can see that I pay EXACTLY what's displayed on the shelf, because that just never happens here. Then I'm going to go to a restaurant for dinner and pay them exactly what the bill says!
Anyway, whinging over - I'm about to watch the first episode of the new season of Supernatural, then off to bed before a big day of travel and sightseeing tomorrow.
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