What to do on a rainy day….

Sunday was an absolutely miserable day here in VA, it stayed dark and rained hard with absolutely no let up, so we decided to drive up to Williamsburg and do some window shopping, there is one road where we have talked about stopping many times it has antique stores, souvenir stores, and some nice looking restaurants, they are all spread out along Richmond Road.

We saw the Yankee candle store from the road and wondered what the shops were that flanked it either side, we made a quick dash through the rain and opened the door. we were hit with sunlight, blue sky with white fluffy clouds and a small market place with no rain insight….

Of course the blue sky was just painted on the tall vaulted ceiling, and the market stalls were just display stands, but it made a nice bright change from the weather outside.

I was actually in awe of this store, it took up the whole of the building you see pictured above, it was nothing like the Yankee Candle stores I had been in before. The market place was the central point to the store, on the left side there was a fudge store, a candle dipping place, a cooking/home store and a cafe. to the back of the store there was the Christmas store, which stays open all year round, they had a starlit sky and a suspended train bridge that ran around part of he store above everyones heads, they had a toy shop full of toys for children and then the whole of the ride side of the store was designated to candles.

WOW there was allot of candles, I think they had the most candles I had ever seen in one place, the shelves were stacked way above my head, It reminded me of being in an old fashioned library with dark wood shelves and books in every nook and cranny possible, the only difference was instead of books there were candles. in the center of the candle store was the ‘pick and mix’ candles where you could choose 18 small candles for $20, which of course I did.

Although each store appeared separate, to give the whole place the appearance that you were outside and entering different stores, each store was interlinked and you could pay at any register you wanted, carrying your merchandise from ’store’ to ’store’.

Will and I spent over an hour in there, and he only got bored right at the end when I was trying to decide which candles I was going to pick. next time there is a rainy day and your not sure what to do, go and visit Yankee Candle, 2200 Richmond Road, Williamsburg, VA.

Once we finished up at the Yankee candle store, we had a brief look around the Prime Outlet Mall which was just down the road, then headed back to get some dinner at the Red Hot and Blue BBQ restaurant. This restaurant was extremely good value for money, they had a couple of non BBQ items for people like me who likes plain food. Will ordered the pulled BBQ chicken and the portion was HUGE and very tasty, the service was excellent so I absolutly recommend this restaurant to anyone local.

Colonial Williamsburg

The weather has been great for the last week, the temperature has dropped and the sun has been shining everyday, the windows can finally be opened during the day and the air conditioning turned off.

Sunday morning we both got up before 10 and decided that it would be a great day to go to Colonial Williamsburg, we are season ticket holders, which means we can go any time we want without paying, to make out ticket worth the money we only have to go twice a year, Sunday was our second visit this year, and I am sure we will be going back.

I enjoy watching the actors speak with there accents, some real, some false, it makes me giggle to here the false English accent, in these people who are dressed in their 18th Century costumes.

One of my favorite things about Colonial Williamsburg is the Drum and Fife bands, I love the sound they make when they are marching through the town. We stayed at colonial Williamsburg for about 3 hours, watching a couple of reenactments and then we got the bus back to the parking lot, somehow we managed to miss our stop and we ended up having to keep riding until it got back round to our stop again, luckily the bus route is a small circular so we only rode about 15 minutes extra!

We finished the day by eating at Outback Steak House, we did have a very enjoyable day.

What a Beautiful Day

The three days of rain finally stopped sometime in the early hours of Sunday morning, which paved the way to a beautiful autumn day, the breeze was crisp with a slight chill and the sun was shining brightly, it made such a lovely change after the days and hot of humid sunny days that were followed by the dark wet and humid gloomy days.

This weekend was a busy one, Saturday morning was an early (ish) start at The Cat Corner which involved lots of cleaning, Will and I got back sometime around three O’clock and jumped in the shower, volunteering is quite a dirty job and it feels so great to get in the shower and rinse away the litter dust and the cat hair, it also stops me from spending the night sneezing and trying to tear my eyeballs out from allergies. Will decided to lay down after the shower and I let him snooze while I read my book in the lounge. after a while, I think it was only about half past four, I decided I should get dressed, I walked into the bedroom and it was so dark and the bed looked so inviting I couldn’t help but lie down too.

Will had been laying diagonally across the bed so when I slid in beside him the part of the bed where my feet go was perfectly warmed up, I just pushed Will out of my way so I could have the warm spot and I dozed off too, we didn’t wake up until about 7!! I felt so lazy, I hate napping during the day.

When we get up and I go and check my emails on the computer in the den and Will went in to the kitchen to make some iced tea, suddenly there is a huge THUMP and Will looks at me and asks what was that? I said its probably just the new neighbour moving his furniture around. Moments later Mellow developed a sudden interest with an electrical socket in the den and then water started to stream through the window, it was as if someone was spraying the window with a hose there was so much water, I looked at the electrical socket water was dripping through the holes! next we noticed a another dripping sound and we see that water started pooling in the kitchen light fitting, Will got raced upstairs to knock on our neighbours door but there was no one at home. Will got on the phone with the maintenance contractors who look after our apartment, while he was talking to them huge damp patches were forming on the ceiling.

The maintenance man arrived really quickly, he came in and looked at the apartment and went and let himself and Will in, there were no leaky pipes or exploded dishwasher just an exploded 80 gallon trash can with a fish tank filter next to it. So we assume that the guy filled up the can with water left it to settle so that he could transfer it to his fish tank, even though the only things in his apartment were a computer on the floor and bedding and pillows on the floor.

While Will is with the maintenance man I am franticly moving all of our stuff from the den which had the biggest water patches, the computer and all my craft bits and bobs had to come out, the whole room felt so damp and yuk. the patches on the ceiling were turning yellow and dripping water which was turning yellow from the running through the insulation, it was so disgusting.

 

The maintenance man arranged for the carpet people to come with a big dehumidifier to try and dry out the ceiling. While we are waiting for them the neighbour arrives home and comes to survey the damage, he did apologise and then he went back to his apartment.

The water had seeped in between his floor and our ceiling so all we could do was wait for the water to stop dripping through, the dehumidifier helped a lot. we filled a bucket and half from the water dripping through the light fitting, the paint has bubbled in the kitchen, the den looks the worst and there are some marks in the living room too.

Most likely the repairs will involve a hole being cut through the ceiling, new drywall and new paint, in the den, living room and kitchen. I feel like we are living in a big mess because everything that was in the den is now spread out in the living room in an disorganised way.

On Sunday we joined in a charity poker run, which is a poker game that you play in your car by driving to different locations and picking a card at each one, It is organised by a local car club and money raised goes towards the local children’s hospital. The prize of the poker game was $800, the winner donated the money back so it went to the children’s hospital. The event makes its money by charging you a small fee to join in, selling t-shirts raffle tickets, and by being sponsored by local stores.

Sunday night I made some yummy chocolate brownies and went to bed early to read my book, I slept very very well!

Busch Gardens

On Sunday we took advantage of our annual freebie Busch Gardens Europe ticket, Will and I went with Steph, Q and Tony.
I don’t particularly like roller coasters, in fact riding roller coasters, especially the ones that go upside down scares me beyond words…

I have ridden roller coasters that do not turn you upside down and found them bearable, and when i was younger I almost enjoyed them, I have been in a bungee rocket ball, so I know what it is like to be flung around upside down and all over the place on an amusement ride.

We aimed to get to the park nice and early, we arrived just a few minutes after the gates opened, I had made sure Will understood that I was not getting on any ride that went upside down and I was perfectly happy to wait or them with two feet firmly on the ground, The first ride that the others went on was the Griffon, which is a three minute ride with a 90 degree drop with maximum speeds of 71 mph, It looked absolutly terrifying, and the screams confirmed it!

I managed to take a few pictures of the carriages just before they went down that 90 degree drop, the expressions of the people were absolutly priceless, seriously guys WHY do you put your selves through that!!!

The weather was turning out to be absolutely beautiful, we had clear sunny skies the whole time we were there, It was in the mid 80’s so I even got a bit of a tan, I find it so crazy that its October, and I can still walk out side and be sun tanned!!!

The next ride the others ventured on was Alpengeist (snow ghost) which is another ride that went around loops, its another fast ride but not as fast as the others, its top speed is 67 mph You can see Q in this picture he is in the 4th row from the front.

Before we had decided to go to the park, Will made me promise that I would ride the roller coasters that do not go upside down, I agreed because I thought that ordinary roller coasters would not be so extreme as the ones that had loops…I WAS WRONG!

The first roller coaster we all went on together was the Big Bad Wolf, I was reassured by the number of young children waiting in the line to go on the ride, the ride was a three minutes long and only had a maximum speed of 48mph, which felt plenty fast enough for me, it also had an 80′ drop which I didn’t mind to much, and although I didn’t want to get back on it and do it again, I didn’t hate the experience.

Apollos chariot is the next ride that we go on, and Will says to me that the big Bad Wolf was the worse of the two and I will like Apollos chariot even more, so as he is my husband I trust him, and I get on the ride. WOW I have never been so scared, it had a special lap bar which covered the whole of your thy’s and held you in very tight, BUT what I didn’t realize was the first big drop was 210′ in the air with a 65 degree angle taking you to 75 mph, I started off with my eyes open but as we got higher and higher on our way to the top of the first drop I had to close my eyes.

Will was trying to reassure me and the others kept telling me how pretty the view was, so I opened my eyes for a micro second, we were so high up, I felt completely unsafe and hated it! Next came the big drop we went whizzing around the track, only opened my eyes twice after that, once because I thought we were coming to a stop, but I was wrong, we were about to go down another drop (there were 9 drops in total and apparently you feel weightlessness on the ride) the other time I opened my eyes was to get out of the ride when it had really stopped!!!!! I was beginning to worry that I was going to be sick with fear, never ever ever going on another ride again!!!

After the rides we went to Italy and ate lunch at a very over priced restaurant, the food was average and expensive for what it was.

Two water rides came next, Escape from Pompeii had some great effects and it was relatively dry, how ever the log flume was another story, I some how got completely soaked which made me look like I had wet my self, I soon dried out in the afternoon sun.

October at Busch Gardens means in the evenings as soon as the sunset the park has its ‘hallowscream’ event, it includes all kinds of shows and frightening displays, as you walk around the park, people in scary costumes jump out at you and make you jump, screams echo around the park all night, its great!

It was a great day!