Richmond? Why would you go to... Richmond?

On Sunday morning, we woke-up and headed into Charleston again for a brief post-wedding brunch with the extended family. Afterwards, we drove into downtown Charleston and parked just north of Marion Square Park, a beautiful patch of green in the center of town. The visual highlight of the park is a tall pillar topped with a statue of John C. Calhoun, who was born in South Carolina and served in a number of public offices at both the state and national level. While he died in 1850, he was a huge hero for the Confederacy thanks to his pro-slavery and "states' rights" stances through the first half of the 19th century. That's why he's got the monument here. He also knew how to take a great crazy picture.

Elsewhere in the park is a relatively new, tasteful, modern Holocaust memorial, dedicated to (and naming) many of the European Jews who fled before or during the Second World War to settle in South Carolina. This led me to consider the fact that Charleston was the heart of the slave trade in the antebellum period and how unusual it is that the Holocaust -- which occurred half-a-world-away -- merits a memorial in Charleston's most prominent public space, but no similar memorial is present for the thousands (millions?) of African-Americans who were enslaved here for over two hundred years. Wouldn't you be surprised to find a memorial to African-Americans enslaved in the US in the middle of a German city?

Of course, I couldn't resist dragging D on a foot trip through the older parts of Charleston in order to find St. Philip's churchyard, where Calhoun (and many of his family members) are buried. D was a good sport.

After finding Calhoun -- and the closest Starbucks, which in true Starbucks style was exactly 1 block from the next Starbucks -- we were on our way to Richmond, some 6 hours away.

The wedding we attended this past weekend was infested with UVA graduates, several of whom had lived in Richmond before or after college. What we heard from most of them was: "Why would you go to Richmond?", or perhaps "I guess if you need to stop somewhere for a night, you can do worse than Richmond." So we weren't expecting much.

As it turns out, Richmond is terrific. First, we're staying at a great bed-n-breakfast, located in the Carytown neighborhood, called the Museum District Bed & Breakfast. It's a huge, beautiful house (and carriage house, where we are staying) built in 1922 and only recently renovated and converted into a B&B. The owner, Anna Currence, runs a friendly, professional business here and has really made us feel at home. D and I have stayed at B&Bs all over the country, but this place is a cut above the norm (and at a very reasonable rate, too).

D picked this B&B because it's close to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Unfortunately, as it turns out, the museum is closed Mondays and Tuesdays, so we'll have to miss it. Instead, we started the morning by heading to our next destination: The Edgar Allan Poe Museum. Oh, wait, that's closed on Mondays, too. No worries; D is an attorney, and wants to see John Marshall's house, now also a museum. So we open our guide book for directions and... also closed Mondays.

Here's what we did do: We logged over 20,000 steps (D's note: My feet hurt), starting by walking up Church Hill to see the old, wooden church where Patrick Henry gave his famous speech and Poe's mother is buried. There are also great views from the church of the surrounding areas. Then we headed down to the center of Richmond to see the so-called "Confederate White House", the mansion that served as Jefferson Davis' headquarters during the Civil War. It's located next to the Museum of the Confederacy, which we toured first. The museum is OK; the house is quite interesting. It's mostly intact from its Confederate days, and contains quite a few of its original furnishings. As it turns out, President Lincoln visited it a few days after Davis fled (in the closing days of the war) and only a few weeks before Lincoln was assassinated. Our tour guide was extremely knowledgeable and passionate about his subject, but a real piece of work: He paced constantly while speaking, spoke quickly, and did not make eye contact with anyone on the tour. I desperately want to write him and give him some compliments along with some mild constructive criticism, but D says I can't...

It vaguely irked me that everyone working at the museum and the house calls it just "the White House" and kept calling Davis "the President". (Also, the house is clearly gray, not white).

After a stop for lunch, we caught a cab over to Hollywood Cemetery. Our B&B had told us about this and gave us a booklet detailing the cemetery's history and some of its more illustrious occupants and grave markers. Among others, the cemetery contains the graves of President John Tyler, President James Monroe, and Jefferson Davis. That's Tyler's pictured here. In 1841, Tyler was the first Vice-President to become President upon the death of an elected President; one of his nicknames was "Your Accidency". He later played an active role in the Confederate government, the only US President to do so. (Later in the day, D began singing the words "Tippecanoe and Tyler, too" to the tune of T. Rex's "Metal Guru").

Elsewhere in the cemetery, we located Davis' fairly large, scenic plot, surrounded by various family members (most of whom are children who died premature deaths).





Our last stop was a huge pyramid built as a memorial to Confederate soldiers, and surrounded by many Confederate graves -- some 18,000 in total throughout the cemetery.

There are also many new internments at Hollywood -- quite a few. One stone caught our eye as we walked back towards the entrance.


Tomorrow, it's on to Philadelphia, and then to Boston. Hard to believe it, but this trip is almost over.