NYC -2- ATL

Today we awoke in our beachfront eleventh floor corner room to beautiful sunny skies. I slept in late and bummed around the room. Then we moved everything to our new room a floor below; our awesome room had already been booked for the weekend. I did laundry and worked on the computer, making a few small upgrades to the site. The people-watching started to get better on the boardwalk as fighter jets buzzed around overhead.

In the late afternoon we headed downstairs and found a few slices of pizza for lunch. We walked around for awhile looking at the shops and the people. On the way back, on the boardwalk, we approached a guy holding a long oar in the air that we had seen earlier from our balcony. When we asked why he was holding it, he replied “So people will ask me about it!” It turns out he was a volunteer for the Virginia Beach Surf & Rescue Museum which was having a re-opening party to celebrate the occasion of the governor of Virginia lifting most of the COVID restrictions.

The museum was free for the occasion, so we took the bait. We looked through a 100 year old telescope that had been used at a Lifesaving Station that was the precursor to the U.S. Coast Guard. We saw the small canons known as Swivel Guns that, as the story goes, were stolen from the HMS Liberty in one of the colonies’ first acts of rebellion against the crown. It was a small museum, but afterwards I required a nap.

After waking from the nap, I wrote a few postcards home. I can’t get enough of this writing stuff on this trip! Dad had been studying the map and he was concerned: When we leave Virginia Beach tomorrow, there is about 38 miles to get to a ferry that only runs a few times a day. Even after we catch the ferry, we’ll be another 40 miles from the next decent sized town where we can find a hotel. Though we were resting and staying in our most expensive digs yet, we decided we would need to get up early and make good time to ensure we make the Noon crossing.

I like this place, I don’t want to leave,
Much better than, reality.
Virginia Beach

- Keller Williams

With that, we headed back out in search of dinner. We found it at a little dive seafood bar that had a great special for crab & shrimp baskets. I got a half dozen raw oysters from the James River and they were great! After dinner, we got soft-serve ice cream from Kohr Brothers which also did not disappoint. We crusied the strip people watching on the way back to the hotel. The city was putting on concerts and had paid street performers to do their shows for free. We watched a juggler/magician and had a laugh before turning in.