Virginia - 13-14/8

The (very) long driving from Washington to Virginia brought us to a wonderful resort. Yes, we had no idea that we will reach 'club med'. A resort is a resort. That is, it has a closed area with pool, mini golf, tennis court and others utilities we didn't visit. The accommodations includes a house with two bedrooms, a leaving room, two baths and a kitchen. And, of course, a porch and even a washing machine. So, for the third (and last) time we did some laundry. Those are two floor houses and we got the ground floor with another couple who was on the upper floor. And two skunks that visit our garbage (more about that later). 

As usual, we arrived very late, so there was no time to enjoy the facilities. That's why on the next day, instead of staring the day by going out, the kids went to the pool. Actually, the morning started with Ioana and Tamar making a discovery tour of the place in the attempt to buy milk and eggs for breakfast. That's when we saw the location of all the fun stuff. 

the main house 

After the pool, around noon, we decided to visit the naval base in Norfolk. 

This is the biggest base in USA. It serves the Atlantic side. The tour is 45 minutes, in a bus and a naval police officer is doing the talking. The tour is, of course, a small peek and as much as they want to show. So, we saw some naval destroyers and helicopter carriers and also a submarine. The aircraft carriers where not there. Also the navy have aircrafts and we saw some of them. 

Norfolk Naval Base

The base is huge and there are a lot of facilities which we saw only from outside - like simulators, survival pool and many more. They also did some kind of open expo of houses from all kind of states in USA. Those houses are occupied by colonels and up. They are really very big and fancy. 

The kids were impressed. In the tour it was They mentioned that before 9/11 anyone with a valid Id could visit the base and now u need to be in the army in order to enter. Ioana remembered from her visit in Virginia that she walked on the pier and visited an aircraft carrier.  

On our way to Norfolk, there is a bridge after Hampton where u drive part of it above and part beneath the water. Nice. Not as nice as the bigger bridge that connects to the.... Peninsula.  But we didn't reach it eventually.

ocean view

The tour started at 14:00 so since we are near the see, we decided to go to the beach. The closest one was in Oceanview. The beach was almost empty. Nearby there was a fisherman pier with a restaurant. Never mind gluten free or not, Ioana is hungry so better to go and eat. Indeed, we got a place on the upper terrace. The food is mostly seafood, very good. So we found tuna for Tamar, shrimps for Ioana. The kids and Yoram ate wings and chicken sandwich. But the view was so beautiful and peaceful. 

After lunch we decided to have ice cream and coffee in Virginia beach, where we can see some people. But as we went to the main road we saw that there are traffic jams, so we decided to return back and stop on the way home for a coffee and for some food for the evening. We stopped in Newport News for Starbucks and since a Target store was close by we visited it and bought some more stuff (not a lot). We reached home again very late, at around 21:00. 

The day after, Yoram woke up at 10:00. Yes, first time since we are here we are laying back a little bit. This time we have to take advantage of the mini golf court. 

sal's pizza

We felt safe enough to let the kids go alone. And after mini golf, they wanted to visit the pool again. So during this time, Ioana arranged the luggage since we wanted to have balanced weight for the flight to Orlando. Around 14:00 we were all very hungry so we went to visit the Italian restaurant next by: "Sal's pizza". Actually, this was the best restaurant we visited since we are here. A good Italian restaurant (American food is oily and disgusting). 

And then, some history. We are so close to Colonial Williamsburg, that we went to visit it. The visitors center closes at 17:00, and it was already 16:00, so we didn't buy any tickets, but went by foot to visit it. The place is part of the Revolutionary War against the British empire. All the small village looks as it is in 17th century. The people wear epochal costumes. We didn't know but at 17:00 there is a central exhibition which tries to bring to life the battlefields. So we saw soldiers marching, playing, performing arm firing exercises and even firing an old canon. Seems that Tamar and Ioana were the only ones delighted by the show. The boys were very busy with planning their minecraft battles.

colonial williamsburg

We concluded the evening pretty early since tommorow we need to wake up around 4:30 .