Richmond Family Trip

Wow guys. Richmond? I did not know. This summer (as in 6 months ago, whoops!) Mike and I took a little trip with my family down to Richmond. Making it to Richmond was on my bucket list for years and I was so pleasantly surprised by what a charming slow paced city it was. We rented a great townhouse on AirBnB near Cary St. and it was such a pleasure to return to it every day after our touristy activities.

We were in Richmond for 3 nights and we made a quick stop in Fredericksburg for lunch on the way down. I thought this was just the right amount of time.

Here's a little round up of the things we did:

Civil War Hospital Museum. My personal opinion about civil war sites is that they are worth visiting for the civil war trinkets in the gift shops alone. Kerry and I enjoy wearing civil war apparel around the gift shop and laughing uncontrollably like the respectful young ladies we are. This small museum was also pretty neat because they had all the surgeons kits that were used during the civil war, primarily for amputations. Whatever goes wrong in my life I am going to remain thankful that I did not have anything amputated during the Civil War.

Cold Harbor: You can see we take our Civil War sightseeing seriously. I'm totally kidding. But Civil War sites seem to be the thing to do in Richmond and so we really leaned in to the experience. We walked the standard trail through Cold Harbor "battlefield" which if I'm being honest with you is a small patch of woods with some small indentations in the ground which I'm told used to be trenches. I'm being a touch hyperbolic here but not by much. There's only really a couple of clearly visible trenches, but the fact that are any remaining at all is still pretty amazing.

Bike riding! Kerry, Mike, and I brought our bikes with us so we rode them around a little every day. Biking around Richmond is about 2,304,756 times easier than biking around D.C. Even on a weekday downtown there are just so few cars on the road compared to D.C. If I lived in Richmond I would bike everywhere.

** St. John's Church where Paul Revere gave his "give me liberty or give me death speech"** I'm using the asterisks here so that it's clear this was THE highlight of the trip! This is basically a little reenactment situation that was so much better then expected. Then after the performance all of the friendly reenactors hang out outside ready to pose for pictures with enthusiastic instagrammers like Kerry and myself.

Hardywood Brewery: On one of our bike rides we ended up at Hardywood Brewery. We didn't do a tour, just grabbed some beers and sat outside on their sweet patio situation. It was so pleasant and I met a really nice dog. I wish DC had something similar.

Hollywood Cemetery: Let's see. I think there was something of historical importance here but I don't remember and am too lazy to look it up! It's basically a really old cemetery perched on a hill looking down over the river. It was really pleasant and we saw some civil war graves if I remember correctly.