Virginia at Hotelswithall
|
All About Virginia
Traveling through Virginia, the oldest, largest and wealthiest of the American colonies and the single most powerful influence on the early United States, is a nonstop history lesson. Pretty and rural it may be, but it's the past that predominates: wherever you go you're pointed towards this or that painstakingly restored two-hundred-year-old building, where something or other happened a long time ago. The more you know about it all, the more rewarding Virginia is to visit, but the historical plaques get a bit ridiculous after a while, marking every spot where George Washington slept, Thomas Jefferson thought, or Robert E. Lee tied his horse to a tree. You can see why Disney chose northern Virginia as the site of its proposed theme park of American history a few years back; and you'll also soon realize that Virginia takes itself a bit too seriously to allow such a project to get off the ground.
Virginia's recorded history began at Jamestown, just off the Chesapeake Bay, with the establishment in 1607 of the first successful British colony in North America. Though the first colonists hoped to find gold, it was tobacco that made their fortunes. The native strain - used for hundreds of years by Virginia's indigenous population, of whom almost no trace remains - was too strongly flavored for European tastes. When a smoother, more palatable variety was introduced in 1615 by John Rolfe - the same man whose shipwreck on Bermuda inspired Shakespeare's The Tempest - tobacco quickly became the colony's major cash crop. Before long, vast plantations, owned by a very few aristocratic families, sprang up along the many broad rivers that flow into Chesapeake Bay. To grow and harvest tobacco required both an immense amount of land - so the Native Americans had to go - and intensive labor which led to the plantation owners bringing in slaves from Africa.
By the end of the seventeenth century, enslaved African Americans accounted for nearly half of the colony's 75,000 people; a hundred years later, they numbered over 300,000. Virginians had an enormous impact on the foundation of the nascent United States: George Mason, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and four of the first five US presidents were from Virginia. However, by the mid-1800s the state was in decline, its once fertile fields depleted by overuse and its agrarian economy increasingly eclipsed by the urban and industrialized North.
As the confrontation between North and South over slavery and related economic and political issues grew more divisive, Virginia was caught in the middle. Though this slaveholding state initially voted against secession from the Union, it joined the Confederacy when the Civil War broke out, providing its capital, Richmond, and its military leader, Robert E. Lee, who had previously turned down an offer to lead the Union army. Four long years later, Virginia was ravaged, its towns and cities wrecked, its farmlands ruined and most of its youth dead. It has never regained its early prosperity, or its prominence in national affairs.
Richmond itself was largely destroyed in the war; today it's a small city, with some good museums, and is the best starting point for seeing Virginia. The bulk of the colonial sites are concentrated just to the east, in what is known as the Historic Triangle . Here the remains of Jamestown, the original colony, Williamsburg, the restored colonial capital, and Yorktown, site of the final battle of the Revolutionary War, lie within half an hour's drive of each other. Another historic center, Thomas Jefferson's Charlottesville, sits at the foot of the gorgeous Blue Ridge Mountains, an hour west of Richmond. An attractive small college town in its own right, it's also within easy reach of the natural splendors of Shenandoah National Park and the little towns of the western valleys. Northern Virginia, often visited as a day-trip from Washington DC, features several posh suburbs and a number of restored historic homes, the closest colonial architecture to the capital in Alexandria, and Manassas, the scene of two important Civil War battles.
|
Virginia Hotels Bulletins
Resolved Question: Central America travling question?
Me and my cousin were looking through where were going to go this year we figured we would go to Nicaragua. Now we are going to leave on december 25 one day after christmas and were heading there for half a month! Wow 15 days i live in west virginia and i need to know good hotels and entertainment areas for nicuragua if you have any other suggestions to go to different places tell me about this place
Read more...
Voting Question: What are the best hotels to stay in for Virginia Beach? Also where check in age is not 21?
Read more...
Voting Question: Can you check into a hotel when your 18 but someone 21+ is paying for it,but they won't be there?
so me and my friends are going on a trip to virginia beach and one of my friends mom is paying for it, obviously she is 21+ but were only 18 and none of us have credit cards so i was wondering if it was legal or ok if someone 21+ pays for the hotel over the phone or online but are not present at check in?
Read more...
Resolved Question: can police search hotel rooms without a warrant?
Also, does this law go for all states in the USA or is it state to state? Like I live in Ohio, would it be different in Pennsylvania? or Virginia?
Read more...
Resolved Question: What are the good concert venues in Northern Virginia/Washington, DC?
Just wondering what they are. Also, for concert venues, I also mean places you can rent out. Please, no hotels. Thank you.
Read more...
Voting Question: What should I do about this situation?
So, my boyfriend has been in West Virginia for work for about a month. Last weekend he came home to see his daughter. Yesterday, he text me and told me that his daughter's mom wants to come to West Virginia with his daughter and stay the weekend, and asked if I was ok with that! He said they wouldnt sleep in the bed together but he really wants to see his daughter. I told him that it did bother me and it was extremely innapropriate to be staying in a hotel room with his ex alll weekend and that if he wants to see his daughter he can come home, (which is only three hours away) Was I wrong? I would never want to keep him from his daughter but his ex still wants him and is using the child to get closer to him, and I am not comfortable with her staying the weekend with him.
Read more...
Resolved Question: Smoking in hotel, panalty.?
My friend got a room last week for drinking with friends. It was a kind of apartment, not a hotel. Sometimes they rent their empty room for people. we should have not smoked in the room but some people did. and they found out we did smoke in the room. and he said that he lost $100 of deposit money and $350 more.
include him, total 4 people did smoke in that room. and now , he wants me to pay $100
I want to pay it if he is not lying.
we are living in Virginia and rent fee is not more than $400 acutually.....
My friend got a room last week for drinking with friends. It was a kind of apartment, not a hotel. Sometimes they rent their empty room for people. we should have not smoked in the room but some people did. and they found out we did smoke in the room. and he said that he lost $100 of deposit money and $350 more.
include him, total 4 people did smoke in that room. and now , he wants me to pay $100
I want to pay it if he is not lying.
we are living in Virginia and rent fee is not more than $400 acutually.....
oh i wonder that $450 dollor is only for smoking or something else included....
He told me that he will show me a receipt..but i cant believe him anyway
Read more...
Resolved Question: What should I bring? I do this everytime.?
I'm to Williamsburg Virginia with my school to busch gardens then to a hotel. But what can i bring? camera, phone, what? etc.
Read more...
Resolved Question: Cheap but exciting honeymoon locations on the East Coast?
My ideal honeymoon would be to Monaco, with the Monte-Carlo casino, the beach, the mountains, and exciting museums/gardens. But that is WAAY out of my budget.
Soo, I'm looking for, hopefully, an equally exciting location on the east coast of the US. I live in Virginia and I'm not interested in a honeymoon in this state. Plane travel is fine, and I'd want a really upscale hotel and spa.
Read more...
Resolved Question: yellowstone park question?
I figured out where im going this summer YELLOWSTONE! and im going to ask if you can help plan my trip i have 3000 dollars! i need a hotel to live in and estimates on how much it may cost! here is some of my info i live in the panhandle of west virginia i have a 3000 dollar budget im going with me my grandfather and my dad. my dad is 44 grandfather is 53 im 13 were leaving late summer!
Read more...
|
|
|
