Colonial Williamsburg

Don't miss Carter's Grove. The slave cabins are an interesting chance to see the harsh reality of the lives of those who worked to create an elegant life for the gentry.

The main house itself is a fascinating look at how the wealthy of the early 20th century romanticised the wealthy of the early 18th century

Also at Carter's Grove is Wolstenholme Town--an archaelogical dig of an early 17th century settlement. The partially reconstructed structures and the Wolstenholme Town museum evoke the harsh life of the earliest Virginians and showcase the painstaking archaeological work used to help reconstruct that life.

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You can book a twin room here--something of a rarity in the US. Unfortunately, though, for those who want to get 4 people in a room, there's no such thing as a room with two double beds.

Many rooms have decorative or working fireplaces, and you can call housekeeping to have a fire laid if you want. If your room doesn't have a working fireplace, don't worry--the common area of your building will probably have one.

Williamsburg is one of those places that shows best in the morning or evening, when most of the tourists are not yet about, and this is the strongest argument for paying a premium to stay within the historic district--as you walk to breakfast or to your room in the evening, you feel as if you may really be back in another time.

NB-The Lodging section of the Williamsburg website has a description of all of the rooms in the Colonial Houses--for the best location, try to get a house off Duke of Gloucester St, which is right in the thick of things.

The breakfasts I had here indicate that the food and service are on a par with the decor.

When you are seated, a waiter immediately comes to ask you how you are, give you menus, and ask whether you'd like some coffee. An answer of "Yes" brings a china cup and saucer, a creamer filled with cream or milk, and good dark coffee. After the coffee comes a tray of assorted mini muffins.

The menu gives traditional breakfast fare a gourmet twist. I especially remember the crispy Meyer Lemon Belgian Waffle with honey butter and the decadent Crab Benedict with creamy Sun-Dried Tomato Hollandaise. Since this is Virgina, most breakfasts come with Virgina ham, though you can have sausages if you want.

Service is impeccable - coffee is refilled before you have time to request it, and the waitstaff keeps a watchful eye on you, waiting to see if you need anything.

My Mom and I had breakfast there three mornings, and were pleasantly surprised on the second day to find that the hostess remembered us and made a special point to ask how we were enjoying ourselves.

All this quality and care comes at a price, though - coffee alone is $4 a cup and the entrees range from $9 for the Meyer Lemon Waffle to $20 for the Crab Benedict. We didn't pay this out of pocket, however, as we were on a package that included breakfast daily with tip and generously allowed us our choice of anything on the menu - a strategy I highly recommend if you want to stay and eat at one of Williamsburg's more upscale properties.

Campbell's is my favorite of the Williamsburg taverns because one of its other specialties is spoon bread - a sort of cross between cornbread and souffle. It also serves delicious sweet-potato muffins with every meal.

You can order either a set menu or choose your dinner from a'la carte entrees. The set menu is the best value - you get soup, half a fried chicken, a bit of Virginia ham, the spoon bread, coleslaw, muffins that come with every meal, and a dish of homemade ice cream. The set meal costs $25.75, and the chicken is crispy and good enough so you almost wish you hadn't eaten all those muffins.

The bakeshop sells crusty white rolls, delicious Sally Lunn bread (about $3 a loaf), biscuits with Virginia ham (which make a good light lunch), and sweets like gingerbread cookies and Queen's Cake - a dense poundcake flavored with lemon and studded with currants.

The bakeshop also sells drinks such as fresh cider (mulled with cinnamon and cloves in the wintertime).

You can eat your snacks on benches arranged around the shady courtyard between the bakeshop and tavern. It's a nice cool place to stop on a hot afternoon.

Unlike the other taverns, the King's Arms has an indoor waiting area with a toasty fireplace--a huge plus in winter, when standing outside waiting for your table can be a chilling experience, even with the bonfires that burn outside each tavern to warm waiting patrons.

The tavern serves hearty fare like prime rib and game pie. One of the specialties, peanut soup, isn't authentic colonial fare, but it's warm, creamy, and tasty nonetheless.

Meals include fresh bread and apple cheddar muffins (go for the bread, pass on the somewhat soggy muffins), as well as a complimentary appetizer of a tasty selection of homemade relishes and pickles.

The dining rooms are dim--paneled rooms lit mostly by candlelight means that it'll be somewhat murky until your eyes adjust--but the overall effect is cozy, and a touch fancier than the other taverns.

The staff is friendly and helpful, though on the night we were there the kitchen was a bit slow.

Overall, the food is solid but not spectacular--try Campbell's or Shield's for better tavern food--but when it's windy, dark, and cold out, the cozy fireplaces and peanut soup merit a visit.

Where Christiana Cambpell's and Chowning's serve authentic 18th-century dishes, Shields serves a mixture of authentic foods (the Shields Sampler of appetizers, including savory crab cakes and sweet carrot pudding, being the best example), and menu items which use fresh local ingredients that 18th-century cooks would have used, but are prepared with modern techniques.

Colonial cooks made green salad, but probably didn't dress it with Roasted Shallot and Virginia Riesling Vinegrette.

The menu includes carnivorous (the fillet-mingon with port reduction and roasted stilton potatoes--very tasty) and vegetarian choices. Like all Williamsburg taverns, there is also a set meal, which is a good value.

In the case of Shields, the set menu included a green salad, chicken breast with Virginia Ham, and a seasonal cobbler (with homemade ice cream--YUM!) for $27.

The decor is simple, with plain colonial-style furninshings. Light is provided by the tavern's many fireplaces and by candles on each table. It's pretty dim, but your eyes will adjust to the dark. For ease of menu-reading, however, you may want to make reservations early enough so you can order while there's still daylight.

A meal at Shields includes entertainment by singers and musicians in 18th-century costume. One of the most memorable moments of all our meals at Shields was seeing a mother and her young daughters singing merrily along as a singer with a guitar led them in traditional folk songs.

Shields also serves authentic 18th-century drinks--tasty if you like rum, not so tasty if you don't, since rum was a mainstay of colonial libations and is in almost every drink on Shields menu.

It serves modern American cuisine with an emphasis on fresh seasonal ingredients, but its big claim to fame is the array of chocolate desserts created by chef Marcel Desaulniers.

We went to the Trellis for lunch, where, looking for something both warm (it can be COLD in Williamsburg in December) and light, we chose the soup and salad lunch for $6.95.

There were two choices of soup for the day: tomato basil and cheddar cauliflower chowder. Both were warm, creamy (even the tomato basil, which contained no dairy products at all) and delicious.

The soup came with several varieties of homemade bread, including an interesting soft white loaf with wild rice in it and a tasty loaf that included sultanas and tasted something like stollen.

There was also a green salad of mesclun with a simple vinaigrette and artfully placed shreds of beet (tasty even for non-beet eaters).

The main dishes were as light, fresh, and artfilly presented as the dining room, a pleasant area with lots of natural light, high ceilings, contemporary light-wood furnishings, and cheery apple-green madras table linens (which, as we left, were being replaced with traditional white linen for the dinner service).

For dessert, we ordered a chocolate sampler, which included a mini chocolate mousse cake covered in ganache and two quenelles of homemade ice cream--one espresso and one chocolate sorbet. All were good, but not spectacular.

On the whole, the Trellis is a good bet for lunch in Williamsburg when you're maxed out on colonial fare. It may not, however, have much that's enticing to kids--except the desserts and cookies that it's famous for--so if you're visiting Williamsburg with the family, you may want to pick another dining option.

During lunch, it serves homey favorites like pulled prok barbeque and Virginia Ham and Gloucester Cheese sandwiches. At night, Chewning's has switched from serving a full menu of sit-down meals to having a sort of perpetual happy hour from 5 PM on, with a menu of appetizers--barbeque ribs, Virginia ham and biscuits, and that old Colonial favorite, hot wings, along with alcohol and soft drinks.

This is actually a good thing--it used to be that if you wanted a drink and a snack in the evening and you were in the historic district, you were out of luck--although the Taverns serve alcohol, you couldn't just walk in and order a drink and munchies at the bar. Now that Chowning's has changed it's menu, you can.

If you're in the mood for something heartier than appetizers, you can still get Chowning's Brunswick stew ($17.00, it comes with a corn muffin).

From 5 to 8 PM is the family time, with "Gambols"--strolling musicians and games for the kids. After 8, the entertainment is geared more for adults.

The site is a fascinating blend of four centuries. The reconstructed slave quarter, which you see on your walk to the main house, is staffed with interpreters who are more than willing to talk about the life of a slave in 18th century Virgina. The small rustic cabins in which the slaves lived are a striking conrast to the elegant main house beyond.

The main house is decorated as it was in the 1930's, when it was purchased and restored by the McCrea family - an interesting look at how the well-to-do of the early 20th century romanticized the lives of the well-to-do of the early 18th century.

In the vast "front yard" of the house, which is bordered by the James, stands the reconstructed pieces of Wolstenholme Town and the Winthrop Rockefeller Archaeology museum, where artifacts recovered at the site are displayed.

Wolstenholme Town takes you back to the earliest days of Virgina, and plaques placed throughout the sight tell the tale of the settlement and its eventual demise following a Native American uprising. I found the bits and pieces of reconstructed stockade at Wolstenholme Town the most evocative site I visited in Williamsburg. As I stood on the gun platform, peering over the rough-hewn boards of the stockade towards the sun setting over the James, I had a sudden flash of what it must have been like to live in a tiny outpost, in what you consider to be a wholly uncivilized land.

Note that Carter's Grove will be closing in 2003 for renovations and will remain closed of 2 to 3 years, so if you want to see the site, you have to hurry up and go or be prepared to wait.

The first time I went, when I was nine or so, I had a great time going in and out of the restored houses, shopping for colonial goods in the shops, watching the fife and drum parade, and eating gingerbread cookies from the Raleigh Tavern Bakery in the shady courtyard behind the tavern itself.

Now there's even more for kids to do. For a fee, children can rent 18th century clothes for the day. Young interpreters, also in costume, spend part of every summer day playing colonial games behind the Gorvernor's Palace. They'll be happy to teach you the finer points of hoop-rolling.

As long as you're behind the Palace, try to solve its hedge maze. It's not so hard that older kids - say eight or nine - will get bored before they can solve it.

The stocks, located in front of the Courthouse in the center of town, are a perennial favorite. Who can resist snapping a picture of Dad or your big sister in the stocks?

Some interpreters portray famous people, so you might bump into General Washington as you explore, and ask him about that cherry tree. If you don't run into him, check the calendar of events. The founding fathers usually have question and answer programs which are included in the cost of admission, if you have a Freedom Pass.

And the daily fife and drum parade and those gingerbread cookies are still awesome.

My expectations sank even lower when I saw the venue--the auditorium in the Williamsburg Lodge. It's perfectly nice as auditoriums go, but 1960s rather than 1760s, and the fold-out desks attached to the arm of each seat gave me nasty standardized-test flashbacks.

As soon as the actor who was to be our guide to the 18th-centry theater appeared on stage, however, my reservations disappeared. Through sheer genial, goofy charisma, he soon had the spectators instructed in the fine points of 18th-century audience etiquette, hissing what they didn't like, cheering what they did like, and shouting out encores in the midst of the performance.

The play itself is a farce, revolving around a secret marriage (surprise) between a wealthy young woman and her penniless lover. It's amusing but silly, and the actors have decided to play it broadly, to great effect. The characters are cartoonish, including a foppish young suitor, a vain but kindly old baronet, and a Cinderella-esque wicked sister, but they're all a scream.

The night I was there, the audience really got into the spirit of the thing and we hooted, hissed, clapped, and cheered our way through the whole hour-and-a-half performance. In fact, watching the audience was as entertaining as watching the play.

In the end, the program that I was sure would be my least favorite of this trip to Williamsburg turned out to be the best thing I went to.

If you're in Williamsburg and <>The Clandestine Marriage (or any other 18th-century comedy) is playing, be sure to go. You'll have a fun night. (Skip the tragedies,though--they're only for the real spartan . . .)

One of the most striking examples of how our knowledge of the period has changed over time are the interiors of the Governor's Palace. If you haven't been in the Palace for 10 years or so, the difference is surprising.

The Governor's Palace is one of the most beautiful buildings in all of Williamsburg. It's a reconstruction - the original burned down in the early 19th century. It was one of the first buildings in the historic district to be rebuilt, and when it was finished, it was decorated with yards of luxurious damask, rolls of chinese-influenced wallpaper, and painted in restrained colors. It was beautiful. It was "colonial." It was inaccurate.

The building itself was correct enough - it had been designed based on 18th century drawings and archaeological evidence. But when the researchers at Williamsburg found the household inventory of one of Virginia's last governors, they realized that the furnishings and decor were almost all wrong.

Over a number of years, curators painstakingly repainted the rooms, removed the chinese wallpaper from the dining room (which is kind of too bad--it was stunning), and refurnished the Palace with the items that the inventory mentioned. Now the Palace, with its refurbishment complete, is a facinating snapshot of a precise moment in time, down to the last soup tureen in the butler's pantry.

Another relatively recent change to Williamsburg is a house that the 18th century equivalent of a blue-collar worker would have lived in. It is small, dark, cramped, and seemingly so inexpertly constructed that it looks like a large shack. It's a strong corrective to the upper and upper-middle class houses and shops lining Duke of Gloucester Street, bringing it home that not everybody lived in pretty little clapboard houses with quaint gardens in the back.

Check the calendar of events to see what programs are running during your visit-one of the most fascinating parts of my last visit was a tour of the archaeology labs, where we learned about archaeological digs, how archaeology has evolved since Williamsburg's founding, and how the archaeological findings inform today's historical interpretation. Best of all, most programs, including the trip to the archaeology labs, are included in the price of admission if you buy a Freedom Pass ($40 if you aren't staying in a Colonal Williamsburg Hotel, $30 if you are, the pass provides unlimited admission for one year and gets you 1/2 price tickets to Williamsburg's concerts, plays, and other programs which aren't included in the cost of general admission).