So How's That Anniversary Trip Going?

Today is Sunday, and we're done. It's been a nice trip, but mixed results.

Saturday:
We got up and had a free breakfast at the hotel, then went into town to endure our timeshare sales presentation to get our free tickets. My parents have a timeshare, and they made sure we were not going to say "yes" to anything before we went on this trip. We endured and kept our resolve and ended up with our free Busch Gardens tickets.

So we got into the park at 12:30. For those of you who don't know Busch Gardens, it is a theme park, and the theme is "The Old Country", or Europe. The park is divided into England, Ireland, Scotland, Germany, Italy, France, and "New France", which seems to be Canada although they won't admit it. We walked through the park until we ended up in Germany, where we had a late lunch at the FestHaus (various wursts and ribs and potato salad) and got our battle plan together. We went immediately to the newest attraction, the DarKastle, which is a 4-D ride in haunted castle based on Mad King Ludwig of Austria and Castle Von Schwanstein. This was the best ride of the day, believe it or not. 3-D ghosts and such menace you while the motion of the ride gives you the impression of flying and falling, etc. Very impressive.

We spent much of the day standing in line, and ended up only riding 3 more attractions. I didn't get Bernie onto the Loch Ness Monster or the Alpengeist, however, I did get her onto the Big Bad Wolf, a rollercoaster where your car is suspended underneath the tracks and flies around tight turns and makes a sheer drop toward the river. She loved it. Although she ABSOLUTELY DID NOT WANT to ride the new coaster, the Griffon, she had an unholy fascination with it all day and probably took more pictures and video of that ride than she did of anything else. Go figure.

One small disappointment - they no longer offer brewery tours. There is a little club where you can sample different beers, but you must make an appointment. This used to be the really cool interesting adult part of Busch Gardens, but now it is no more.

We finished our day at Busch Gardens at about 7pm. Neither of us felt like we could stand in line any more because our feet were so sore. Hot and tired, we went back to the hotel room and showered the grime off of ourselves. A bit later we recovered enough to seek dinner and ended up at some deli near the college of William and Mary, where we had two of the best sandwiches I've ever tasted. I had a hot Pastrami with knockwurst and provalone and Bernie had a Corned beef with salami and ham and swiss. This was a really fun day.

Sunday:
We got up and had a nice breakfast in the restaurant next door. We had tried the restaurant up the street, but it had a long line due to tables not being cleared fast enough. We looked and the bus-person was some old woman who was using the bus-cart as a walker. About 20 of the folks waiting in line all decided to leave en masse, and the old man who was running the place was tearing his hair out.

After breakfast, we went to Colonial Williamsburg and walked around a bit. We did a short bit of shopping, then went to the outlet mall and spent 2 hours. Bernie got a skirt and a sweater for her efforts. Then we went back into town and had lunch at Barret's Seafood, which is supposed to be one of Williamsburg's good restaurants. This was a total disappointment. Our waiter abandoned us after we were seated and we had to send another waitress to get him. Then we ordered, and I got crab cakes, mostly due to how good the one ordered by a person at the next table looked. It came and looked completely different, with smaller portions and the asparagus that was supposed to a side dish was mysteriously replaced with some limp broccoli. I called the waiter over and told him of the mistake and he brought me out the asparagus, which was in a tasteless hollandaise (not even a hint of lemon juice in it). Bernie had simply ordered soup and dessert, and the bread pudding she ordered was absent the chocolate sauce that was supposed to be on it. We looked at the same dessert that was ordered by our neighboring table, and theirs was larger portion, with a scoop of ice cream and had the correct chocolate sauce on it. We mentioned the missing sauce to our waiter and got "all the chefs do it a little differently" as an excuse. Well, this was a $35 lunch. What we order, we are supposed to get, and the standard should be set pretty high for that price. We left and didn't complain further, but we won't be going back there, nor will I be recommending that place again. This has not been a fun day.

So now, we're back at the hotel, and we're pretty much done with Williamsburg. I'm giving some thought to checking out early and heading home tonight so we can have a nice relaxing day at home to end the holiday. Bernie is taking a nap and we'll decide when she wakes up. We've really enjoyed being together and adventuring in a strange place, but home is where the heart is, I guess.