Nailing History
Introducing "Nailing History," the podcast where two friends attempt to nail down historical facts like they're trying to assemble IKEA furniture without the manual. Join Matt and Jon (or Jon and Matt) as they stumble through the annals of time, armed with Wikipedia, Chat GPT, and a sense of reckless abandon.
In each episode, Matt and Jon pick a historical event that tickles their curiosity (and occasionally their funny bone) and dissect it like a frog in biology class—except they're the frogs, and they have no idea what they're doing. From ancient civilizations to modern mishaps, they cover it all with the finesse of a bull in a china shop.
But wait, there's more! In between butchering historical names and dates, Matt and Jon take a break to explore the intersection of history and pop culture. Ever wondered if Cleopatra would have been a TikTok sensation? Yeah, neither have they, but that won't stop them from imagining it in excruciating detail.
So grab your popcorn and prepare to laugh, cringe, and possibly learn something (though don't hold your breath). With Matt and Jon leading the charge, "Nailing History" is the only podcast where you're guaranteed to leave scratching your head and questioning everything you thought you knew about the past. After all, who needs a PhD when you've got two clueless buddies and a microphone?
Nailing History
134: We paid $35 to get yelled at by people in colonial costumes
Have you ever paid good money for a disappointing experience? In this continuation of our Virginia adventure, we dive into the reality behind the tourism facade of the Historic Triangle – and it's not always pretty.
We pick up where we left off after Sherwood Forest, as our four-man crew embarks on exploring Jamestown, Williamsburg, and Yorktown. What should have been a fascinating journey through America's colonial beginnings quickly devolves into a series of increasingly bizarre encounters with historical interpreters who can't seem to decide if they're in the 18th century or the 21st. From the young man dangerously swinging a hoe while attempting to explain tobacco farming, to the tattooed kitchen worker who responds to genuine questions with a dismissive "stuff," the supposed guardians of historical authenticity left much to be desired.
Williamsburg emerges as the villain of our tale – a $35 per person tourist trap where asphalt streets are somehow meant to transport you to 1774, rollerbladers cruise past colonial buildings, and the main attraction (the Capitol Building) locks its gates in our faces at precisely 5:00 PM with a smile. The experience raises fascinating questions about historical tourism: When does educational entertainment become exploitative? How do modern sensibilities interact with historical interpretation? And why do some sites succeed where others fail so spectacularly?
Fortunately, Yorktown provides redemption with its well-managed National Park Service battlefield tour and thoughtful exhibits, including a proper recreation of Washington's command tent. Through our misadventures, we offer genuine insights for anyone considering their own historical journey through Virginia – which sites deliver authentic experiences worth your time and money, and which might leave you running back to the 21st century in search of something real.
Join us for laughs, frustrations, and genuine historical curiosity as we navigate the awkward middle ground between past and present in Virginia's Historic Triangle. And learn from our mistakes so your own historical adventures might prove more rewarding than ours!
all right, fans. Um, we're back here with the follow-up, the much-anticipated follow-up episode from the cliffhanger that we left you on last week. Where we left you? Gee, I really thought we would have had some fan mail after that whole walkthrough of our first of three days in historic Virginia. Maybe there's an issue with deleting the stuff that autofills, I don't know, just remember, leave it in there. But yeah, so I don't know if you remember where we left off. We had just finished touring Sherwood Forest with our buddy, tim Coyne, and that was the end of our first day. We were waiting our fourth attendee to arrive and he arrived that evening.
Speaker 1:What else did I, I know? Re-listening to it, I found it funny that John and I were talking about how this guy, tim, why Tim talked too much and talked about everything under the sun and couldn't stay on point, when the whole episode was pretty much that, and I think all of our listeners were probably saying the same thing about us doing a two-part total, almost three-hour two part episode on three days of vacation. That some might find a bit uneventful, but I thought that was kind of funny and that's it. So, where we left you off, we're going to pick right up on Saturday morning we're heading down to the beginning of the official Historic Triangle of Virginia, so we're done with the plus portion of it and this is the tourist trap that they call the Historic Triangle of Virginia and you guys may I'll let you guys, you know get to your own opinion here, but I would say it is it left a bit to be desired on our end, so hope we don't leave a bit to be desired on this episode.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, enjoy. And so then we had the core group at that point, so we were four. And then, yeah that we had the core group at that point, so we were four. And then, yeah, we woke up saturday morning and, uh, that's when we, that's when we hit the road and got into what we didn't know, what, um, we didn't even know that the jamestown, which, as matt said earlier, is the oldest, uh, what was the first permanent english settlement discovered in 16? So it was founded in 1607. We didn't even know. Apparently there's two of them and the only distinction that the national park service and this, like this private entity that runs this outfit called jamestown settlement, is one jamestown, with and without any at the end, yes, at the end.
Speaker 1:So the national park is jamestown with an e, which is the island that they actually landed on, and then there's jamestown settlement, which is no e and that's run by what we later learned was run by the state and it is a tourist trap. We picked the wrong one. We went to Jamestown with no E, walked in, slapped with a $20 entrance fee, I think I got $2 off for having an expired, expired AAA membership card in my wallet and yeah. So we got in and they take your money and they give you no direction on where to go. So the theater we went to see that they talked about instantly boom, slamming the slave trade situation here, which is kind of. I mean, they always have to bring it up, it seems like. But they brought that in because it was the first place that the slaves landed to and the Portuguese brought them over, which we had to give a little bit of a whoopsie to Mr R, who is Portuguese by descent. So you know, I had to give him a little tough love there. But you know, left that off and then, you know, you walk through. They said like go out the door and go to the left. So then we started going through Like they got Again. It's very touristy, like you know. They're kind of trying to make history fun, which you know, which they do, probably surprisingly a worse job than we do on the podcast of that. My opinion they have a little set up Indian village to tour and look through.
Speaker 1:We went into this. I guess it was a longhouse. We learned about longhouses and wigwams in elementary school, I think it was a longhouse. And then we're just minding our own business and then some woman walks up and she's just got a polo shirt on. I think she worked for jamestown and um for the, for the company, and she just started spewing all these random facts but like what we learned ended up being a common theme throughout this area is like there's this weird like hybrid, like um talking in present day and talking in like some kind of character from colonial times, so like it's present tense but in that so like so she's like talking to us and she's saying like, well, you know, you, would you, you'd be, you'd be a, uh, gatherer, hunter, whatever, and like she's trying to tell us about, like our role.
Speaker 1:I'm like, well, no, I'm uh, I work in construction, you know. Like it was just like weird. And then she was talking about how they had a fire yesterday to keep down the mold. And if we didn't keep the mold down, and I'm thinking to myself, is she talking like they actually did have a fire in there, or is she just kind of trying to say like, oh, yeah, like in the story, put you back in the time period.
Speaker 2:Oh, you would have had a fire yesterday, and and the men you would have just been? Coming back from a hunt and the women in the tea in the longhouse would have been preparing for your arrival and you know. But it smelled like fire and there was definitely something.
Speaker 1:So I guess they did like it was just like I didn't really want to get into it. It was just like a weird vibe from that because like she wasn't even dressed in character, which some people were, she wasn't. I don't even know if she worked there. It was weird. So we left there, walked down, they got some ships there and docked in there like that, or the ships that I guess had landed there. I think there was the Discovery and I don't know what the other one is, but these ships were way smaller than you would think. I guess they were built to size and the amount of people that were on these ships and the fact that they sailed across the ocean was pretty impressive. But they were closed because they were renovating them. So you couldn't even go on them, even though normally you could. And it was kind of funny seeing the workers there trying to move the sails to work on the ships and they didn't know what they were doing. That was kind of fun to watch for a little bit.
Speaker 2:We were definitely getting the vibes of like this was like we're just that was percolating, this idea of them, of places taking your money without them, kind of giving you fair warning that not everything is open, like I feel like not being able to go on the ships would have been a pretty core tenant of seeing the settlement. That was kind of just like this that's kind of where it all started. It was just like, oh, you can go into this village and then you get to the ships and you hear construction in the background. So here we are talking to this lady kind of in present tense, kind of in past tense, whatever. You're trying to get into the headspace of what it was like in 1607. And then you just hear this crane going off on the side like dredging sand or I don't know what, pulling out old concrete and I said oh wow, I feel like just taken right back.
Speaker 2:Oh, the British brought that. I guess the English brought that one over. I guess that came over on the fourth ship, a full-size excavator. Um, yeah, it was weird for that I was like it's weird.
Speaker 1:We're kind of looking at each other like this is it's just touristy, so then so we're just trying to go through. It's a little bit of a loop, so we go down there and then we'll start walking up. There's a, there's a imitation fort there.
Speaker 2:That's where we meet character number two of the weekend we're, yeah, we're walking up and uh, we see this man with a back with a hoe right, yeah, it was kind of like just to set the stage.
Speaker 1:It was like kind of hot. It was humid, it was very humid even though we were on the water supposed to rain that day. So there was like humid and it was like hot. It was like kind of uncomfortable that day. It was a little uncomfortable that day. So it was humid and it was hot. It was kind of uncomfortable that day.
Speaker 2:It was a little uncomfortable that day. But we see we're walking up to this fort, this replica fort, because we said this was not the original settlement, so this was all recreated. And we're walking up and we see kind of rows of not crops but the beginnings of what looks to be they're growing, corn're growing you know, I don't know, soybeans, something, they're growing things and they actually are planting.
Speaker 2:We walk up to our left. See, to our left there's this gentleman with a hoe and he's just churning dirt he's not doing anything, he's just looking busy looking busy, uh and I, we then kind of walk towards him. There's a, there's a, there's a post in front of him with signage about, you know, like kind of the whole. Like well, you know, during the winter months he'd be playing a whole backstory on what would have been going on at the time and he stops what he's doing, which was nothing, we're pretty sure.
Speaker 1:Like it engages us. It engages us. We didn't want to engage anybody. We were not interested in getting into the Because at this point realizing this is lame it was already, we were already bummed out and we didn't want to really. We just wanted to go in and out. We had other stuff to do that day, we had another place to go. So we're making our way and let's just see all this stuff. And he somehow engaged us.
Speaker 2:I don't know what happened, but he, he engaged us somehow and started reading the sign and we were all bantering, as matt and I do, and everyone's kind of getting into it. So we would have been like reading something and just hypothesizing, you know, thinking this, that or the other, what it would have been like. And he just stopped and turned, he's like well. And then he started this whole like are you talking in present, are you talking back? Then he started it. Yeah.
Speaker 1:He was like yeah, he's like yeah. I think somebody might have said what are you planting there? And he's like oh, I'm planting tobacco, but we don't have the seeds yet. We're still waiting for them to come in. And I'm thinking is this carrot, are you?
Speaker 2:actually going to plant tobacco.
Speaker 1:I'm guessing they don't plant tobacco on this property. They probably aren't allowed to or whatever maybe. And that's the bit Like oh yeah, it's supposed to be coming on the next shipment, but you didn't really know, maybe he was going to be.
Speaker 2:They were coming in the next. Agriculture was going to send him something, but we just get talking to him and it's a summer job.
Speaker 1:It's a summer job for the guy I came here. I mean, this kid, this kid's definitely in high school. I don't even like he, I don't think he graduated high school. Yeah, he's got braces on, also not part of the time period, but what are you gonna do, um? And uh, I think you know.
Speaker 1:We said, oh, he's like yeah, but we planted that a while and he points over to there was a row of like crops there and he said what all was there? And one of the crops was corn and you saw a little stalk there or whatever. And I said, well, you know what they say, the Dutch, or no? I said you know what they say knee high by July. That's what it should be. And I didn't really get much of a response to that. So I said, yeah, that. So I said yeah, well, that's, you know, that's a pennsylvania dutch thing to say, I guess. And then john said well, pennsylvania, dutch weren't here, um, yet, and uh, the guy, this guy goes I don't know about pennsylvania, but the dutch were certainly here, and um, then he goes on this tirade about how the dutch were, you know, involved in whatever new holl and finding Pirating ships and whatnot Right, and kind of just schooled John a little bit.
Speaker 1:But really he was kind of uninvited and we're just kind of like, okay, it was just really bizarre.
Speaker 2:This whole time we're leaving it, he's swinging this hoe around.
Speaker 1:He didn't just put it down in the ground.
Speaker 2:He kept holding the hoe that he was using and he was like fiddling with it like at any moment. He's gonna like swing it, or he's gonna like step on it. The thing's gonna hit him in the face hit one of us. He was just like dangling with this, like hoe, I was like just you know, like la-di-da-di-da, oh yeah, and the dutch were, and he's just like twirling this thing and and he's talking to us.
Speaker 1:He's trying to give us like a history lesson, but like it wasn't anything of real substance. He's kind of using some buzzwords. He's like oh, you know the British, you know blah, blah, blah, habeas corpus. You know, that's how we're so related to the British and we're like what?
Speaker 2:And then just like okay, he said the whole revolution was summed up in Americans didn't have representation in parliament because of habeas corpus, which, yes, habeas corpus was a very important thing in Western civilization. But he just was throwing out Latin and hoping it stuck.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like Patrick Henry wasn't saying give me habeas corpus or give me death.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean habeas corpus. Yeah, it was under the umbrella of liberty. Give me death, but yeah, habeas corpus was one of the things, so yeah, it was just weird, it was like a buzzword.
Speaker 1:So then John and Mr R get out of there somehow. So then I'm like all right, I'm trying. You know you. So then I'm like, all right, I'm like trying. You're in a situation where this guy's what we came to gather later is definitely this kid's boss is like if you're not talking to anybody, you got a hoe in the field, but you've got to look your part.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but if you're talking to people you don't have to. So this guy's like, oh, it was hot. So this guy's like, okay, I don't have to keep, let's keep talking to these guys. So so he keeps talking and I'm like all right man. And then, you know, mr r asked him like oh, so how many? How many seeds do you plant in each one of these little uh holes that you dug here? And he goes, I'm not sure, maybe one, maybe three, I'm not really sure. And it's like, you know, he didn't really know tobacco seeds are so small, they're like tiny.
Speaker 2:You had a vial of them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's like you definitely, you definitely just throw it, but whatever. So then John and Mr R walk away, and then it's me and Mr W and we're stuck there and I'm like all right, so I finally get away. I'm like all right, man, stay cool. And we leave.
Speaker 1:And then he brings me back in and he's like, actually, if I were to stay cool, if I were working in that time period, I wouldn't be wearing any pants. I was like what? So he started explaining like yeah, my shirt's very long and when I put it on this morning it came down to my knees. So what people would do is, when they work the fields, they would take their pants off and they would wear just their shirt that would cover them down to their knees and I would take this off. So then he started taking off his shirt and I'm like, oh my God, is this guy going to take off his pants? I don't understand. I didn't ask for this.
Speaker 1:And me and Mr W are like what is going on? And he takes his shirt off. I'm like all right, man, and I'm still trying to walk away. And then he starts explaining how you might think that white is what doctors wear, but white is what the laborers would wear back in the day because it was cheaper to make and the poor people would wear white. But doctors and surgeons Now, doctors went to medical school but surgeons didn't go to medical school, where surgery was considered a trade. So the surgeons the doctors would diagnose and the surgeons would do the surgery. But the surgeons always thought the doctors didn't know what they were talking about because of surgery. And I'm like what? I'm like okay great, I'm like okay interesting.
Speaker 2:Mind you, we had a musket firing at noon sharp minutes away from them doing a musket presentation. Yeah, we had to get out of there.
Speaker 1:So I finally got out. It was just funny, man, it was like that kid was a trip man and yeah. So then we toured the fort. They had a musket demonstration and then we got the hell out of there. But the thing, the real bummer and the real thing, if you are going to go to Jamestown, if anyone on the call is going to go to Jamestown granted, I didn't do any preparation. I probably should have known this. But as we were leaving, we start walking into this. They have a very nice building and that was one of the complaints we had. It's like, okay's the $20? But then they have nothing outside and the ships are. I'm like, yeah, they're spending all their money on this building. But then we're walking, as we're leaving, we realized there's this whole museum in there that we missed because we got no direct. There was no Tour starts here, museum's here. We didn't, there was no sign, we didn't know what we were doing.
Speaker 2:So we ended up having to like basically skip the museum because we wasted all of our time talking to mr tobacco back there when we could have been, like, actually looking at something that may have been more interesting yeah, yeah, as we were walking, there was a timeline of the basically the first 100 years of english settlement in virginia and I think the museum we don't know, we didn't go in but like would be chronicling that first like why did they go to virginia? Why were they trying to make money? How was the james, how was it all set up? And it was a whole. We got a whole backstory.
Speaker 1:But yeah, we watched that movie.
Speaker 2:We skipped it and I just didn't point us. Usually I feel like when you go to these, like they have a very clear, you go in, you watch a 5-10 minute film which they had and then they would point you to the oh, go through this museum now. It should take you half an hour. Give you a timeline. It should be 30 minutes to 45 minutes. Walk through it so you have a background. Then you're not going to just be talking to some kid with a hoe about nonsense for 30 minutes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was a whoops, be talking to some kid with a hoe, uh, about nonsense for 30 minutes. So yeah, so we, so we missed that and we're like all right because like, and then we so that's whatever. So so that was it for jamestown, really, I mean, we didn't we had all 50 flags outside. That was cool. Yeah, it was cool. We spent a lot of time at the flags where you know all this stuff, like we kind of didn't plan accordingly to get as much done as we could in jamestown before we had to go to our next spot, which we'll talk about that now was williamsburg. Williamsburg, in my opinion, is the biggest, most disappointing, fraudulently run, shakedown tourist track place in the country, maybe worse than disney world.
Speaker 1:Disney world maybe more expensive disney world, maybe more expensive, but you definitely get more out of disney world than you do. Williamsburg I will have to say we got there a little late again. You know, we went to Jamestown, we got lunch I thought Williamsburg supposedly opened until 9pm so I thought we had plenty of time. We had dinner reservations in Williamsburg for 6.45pm so we timed it based on that, so that we'd be in Williamsburg looking at the tours and get into dinner right away. So we get there around 2pm. I had bought tickets online.
Speaker 1:Long story short, I gave the wrong email, I didn't have tickets, so I had to go to the ticket stand to get our tickets, which took forever because there was only one person working and the lady just decided to have conversations with everybody at the ticket that were buying tickets and tell them to give her tips and stuff. And I'm like Lady, I gotta get my tickets. So I finally get up and get the tickets, and then this lady's real rude. I explained to her like hey, whatever, she's like okay, that's fine, what's your name? And I said Matt. And then she's like okay, I'm like well, it might be Matthew, I don't know if I have Matt or up and I'm like government name.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'm like well, sorry, I don't know which it is and my last name is very unique. I won't blast it on here, but definitely could have been just looked up by my last name, which I think I explained to her. I said, well, just look up my last name. I think there's probably only one, but she was really rude. And then she's like Do you have any questions? And I'm like, absolutely not. Let's get out of here, get the tickets, we start walking. I get everyone there. We walk across this bridge that has these plaques on this bridge that tell you they're trying to transition you back into the time period, right Every 50 feet.
Speaker 2:You take over this bridge, you'll see a plink. So it'll say okay, in 2000, you won't have an iPhone. And then you'll walk another 50 feet. It's now 1980. You never heard of the internet.
Speaker 1:And then you keep walking.
Speaker 2:It's the 20s and whatever, so all the way back to 1774.
Speaker 1:Right to 1774, right? So we, yeah so, so we do so. So we're walking there and I'm just like we paid, we had to pay for all. On top of everything, we had to pay ten dollars for parking. Jamestown was already disappointment. I planned this whole thing. Mr r and mr w are just like along for the ride pretty much. You know I feel kind of bad about they, knew what they were getting into and I would say that tough like, yeah, you signed up for this, but it just wasn't a good day. Wasn't a good day Even if you weren't interested, even if you were interested in history, it wasn't a good day.
Speaker 1:But if you're not interested in history, but if you're not, yeah, they were not historical sites If you're not interested in history, but if you're not, yeah, they were both tourist traps. It's like We've so anyway. So we're walking across this bridge.
Speaker 2:I'm like, oh my God, and so we get there and we're furious too, because we just watched the 10-minute film that was made in 1958. Oh that's a film.
Speaker 1:That was John D Rockefeller's Phil in Williamsburg Business Center. Fresh off of getting told to use my government name when I buy tickets to Williamsburg, we go into this theater. That is a. There's a movie, a film that they're talking about I believe ChatGPT told us to watch. I planned all this on ChatGPT. Again, I used I gave John the same treatment he gives the podcast. So I used ChatGPT to plan this, which is part of why we missed out. But anyway, I think ChatGPT even said watch this movie. It's called, like I don't know, patriot, the Patriot Revolution. I don't know, yeah, patriot Story. Yeah, whatever. So, patriot story, yeah, whatever.
Speaker 1:So we go into this theater. We happen to time it perfectly where it's starting, right when we got there. So we're like, why not go in there? So we go in, starts up. Thank you, john D Rockefeller Jr for putting all this together, making this possible. It's like a whole John D Rockefeller-like show, but it's filmed in the 50s. It could have been filmed in the 40s. I mean, this is a trash production. And we start watching it and I'm like I looked it up.
Speaker 1:I actually it was horrible. It was so bad. It was filmed partly in williamsburg, which is kind of cool, but they could redo it. They charged 35 a person. I mean, they could certainly redo it and make it more um hollywood watch just more current it was hard.
Speaker 1:I mean, it was like it was like a movie that you would watch in class at school in like sixth grade, but not, not, but but you would still prefer to be not watching it. Like you would prefer, like you know how you would get excited to watch certain things in class, like if they want, if they like, if they showed this in class, you would be like, can we just learn? Can we just can?
Speaker 1:you just teach us, instead of watching back up yeah, and I I had like I was like getting bored and you know it was like that they had freaking Thomas Jefferson looking like a bozo, they were showing the House of Burgesses and all this stuff and just the lead up to the Revolutionary War in Virginia is as far as we got. And I look up online. I get on there to check the run time because I'm like how long are we actually going to be watching this? We watched it. It was like a 25 minute long movie, I think, and I'm like all right, it's only 25 minutes. How long have we been watching it? And when I checked my watch, we had been watching it for like five minutes and it felt like 20 minutes.
Speaker 2:I mean, it was horrible we couldn't am I right anymore like, so I was just like dude I said like, dude, this is 20 more minutes of this, we're gonna lose.
Speaker 1:Mr, mr r, mr w. Mr w is probably gonna fly home if we continue to watch this. So we get up. I'm like let's just bail. So we all get up and we leave, and as we're leaving, there's a family in the visitor center and they must have spent. After the experience that we had, which we'll describe to you in the future, now that I look back, you can really tell that these people had gone through it, they'd gone through it.
Speaker 2:But they, they came. We came out they asked us um, oh, you just watched that movie. They said, yeah, and we just said it just started. And they're like, oh, okay, but it, we watched 10 minutes of it, is it? Oh, then you're leaving. So then we presume they went in. But we basically just told them it's a waste of your time.
Speaker 1:You really should just mosey on over that bridge yeah, we kind of we kind of said like, yeah, we, they were, they kind of insinuated like, oh, it's only been going on for five minutes, you already left. We're like, yeah, they're like, okay, I think they had, I think they were on their way out. I think they were like, oh, maybe we'll catch this movie. And now I'm thinking they put two and two together. We just went through Colonial Williamsburg. We've already been through the, we've already been through the the ringer.
Speaker 1:Literally and I don't think we can, I don't think we can do anymore. So they came back to the 21st century.
Speaker 2:We're going into the 18th century.
Speaker 1:And we kind of cross paths and it would be like watching in the Vietnam War or in any war, when you're landing in the, when the new soldiers are landing in the war zone and the soldiers who have already been in there are leaving the war zone and crossing the.
Speaker 1:You kind of feel that sense of like we're the fresh ones and we kind of have hope in our eyes. And this family already went through it and they're like one more shot. How was that movie? And we're like we couldn't even watch five minutes of it, so probably should have taken a hint. We each probably could have taken a hint from each other. I think I kind of just lost that point. And we went over the bridge into the 18th century. We had already paid, so we had to do it and we had dinner reservations. So what do you want?
Speaker 2:We take a 10 minute walk over the. So we walk over the bridge and then there's like a 10 minute path you got to walk to to get to a full scale model town. Basically, that is looks like it could be out of the 18th century. That's.
Speaker 2:that's the whole shtick, partly it is paved in asphalt, which I didn't agree with but paved in asphalt, which I didn't agree with, but paved in asphalt, there's people on bicycles and people rollerblading and not you saw as soon as we walked in here, we're like what is this place?
Speaker 2:yeah, we, we, the shine, the star, you know, began to dim pretty quickly, um, to put a phrase. And so we're there. And you know we're not trying to. We're not trying to get into everything. We kind of knew we were there later in the day, so we're not trying to get into every little thing or see every exhibition yeah, we had two.
Speaker 1:We had two things to see.
Speaker 2:Really, john, yeah, john had two things on his list we wanted to see the governor's mansion, which is a big, big, big building on the on the site, and we wanted to see, uh, the capital, the virginia capital, which, uh, was where the house of burgesses sat, and it's, um, it's, it's one of the longest continuous legislatures in north america. So we get there and where we kind of pop out from this trail, it turns out to be right next to this governor's mansion. So we find out that the tour starting within a few minutes, we see, you know a line, um, kind of gathering outside, and so our 35 ticket. You know, we paid, matt paid, we showed it and we were able to get into the governor's mansion. And we are then with a bunch of these people and we get a tour guide through the mansion, and the mansion was pretty cool actually.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there were a bunch of guns. It was cool, a bunch of guns. There were a bunch of guns. The tour guide was pretty cool. She gave off similar vibes to nadia she tried a little harder.
Speaker 1:She seemed like she was more. She made some funny comment of like yeah, the guns are here because, like, yeah, if you come to see that or no. She made some comment like well, when you come into a government, we were in the waiting room and she's like you know what happened. You come into a government office, you wait around, so this is why this room's here, or something which is funny, yeah, and she gave a whole background of guns and daggers and swords on the walls and she basically said they're all functional.
Speaker 2:But again we're back in 1774 here, and it's the governor's mansion, and the governor was a representative of the king himself. So everything was meant to be.
Speaker 1:You know, like you're in the splendor and the presence of like yeah, of wealth and power and prestige like a show, like to show like you're. You don't mean, you don't mean squat, you know just to. To stay a subject yeah, you are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you are one of the king's underling.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the cool thing about this building as far as Williamsburg goes, because a lot of it was John D Rockefeller Jr's you know pet project, as we learned in that film well, the first minute of that film that it was built on the original foundation. So this building had been burned down and it was rebuilt on the original foundation. So this is where it was and even though it was rebuilt on the original foundation, so this is where it was and even though it was rebuilt I think they were able to the archaeologists were able to gather enough information, like pieces and whatever, to be able to make it look how they figured it looked back in the day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was pretty cool. They were able to. You know, with the evidence they had to work with, they did have a mantle piece that was original and like from that it was like a discolored.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was like a very small piece of the mantle, the fireplace, and they were able to recruit just from that piece. They were able to recreate the design and they kept the piece. They they merged the piece in with the reconstructed piece, which was cool, so there was like a yellowed portion that you could tell was the original piece and we learned out also that if you just took a little toothpaste to it, yeah, this is one of the guys.
Speaker 1:The tour was like, yeah, you take a little bit of that new purple toothpaste. They're all taught, they're always talking about it, take that right out that yellowing.
Speaker 2:I was like, yeah, okay, so we're just cruising room to room and we kind of just breeze through. It was cool. It was cool there were some cool stories.
Speaker 1:There were some cool stories of the story that so this guy, so the guy who lived there, was like the governor, so he was. Yeah, so he was. He was a real bozo. He had a far like. He looked like a goofball um and he ended up like just like hightailing it out of there on the eve of the revolution.
Speaker 2:Didn't tell anybody. Just left one morning All of his servants, everyone was there, all of his servants and everything. Told nobody.
Speaker 1:That was kind of interesting. Then he tried coming back, I think, and they were like nah, you're not coming back. I think that was part of the story. The whole time I couldn't figure out if our tour guide was pregnant or not and I was, uh, I wasn't alone in thinking that. You know, another mr w, I believe, also was wondering because, like, how their outfits are, you know, they kind of puff out around the area where you would be pregnant. So I couldn't figure it out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I didn't know if it was okay to ask her the question, so I did not yeah, couldn't got us kicked out, but then that could have been a blessing in disguise based on where we ended up. So, anyway, so we get through this house and it's really nice like there's a we let us out the back of the house and there's these like gardens and there's a whole like maze that you could walk through which we did, it was cool seeing the maze.
Speaker 1:So then we went over and then they had it. So when we were and there's a whole maze that you could walk through, which we did it was cool seeing the maze. So then we went over and then they had it. So when we were, just flabbergastedly before we took the tour of the governor's mansion, this woman who works there says oh, we're replacing the kitchen expose with a brewery. So if you want to see the kitchen, make sure you see it today. And if you want to come the kitchen, make sure you see it today.
Speaker 2:And if you want to come back, make sure you see the brewery or whatever, and um, so we definitely sold. Oh, and see the kitchen. We did these people working there I'm at. Um, I didn't think they people really tried that hard to get into character. Yeah, they had like the costumes on and this and that, but not much in the way of accents or any kind of like speaking and like everywhere else. We went, like we said earlier, jamestown, like places. People were like putting themselves in the time period speak. These people weren't even like trying. They were kind of just like oh yeah, I'm making this, I'm making that, and so we're in this kitchen and this guy's got this whole lineup. This the chef, the cook of the property, has a whole lineup of like what they would have eaten back then. Some of them look pretty good, a little old, but looked good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the he's the cook. The chef there said or the cook, I guess, said that he made it all. It was all made there. Did you say that already? It was all made there. There's a fire set in the background no, I didn't specify that it was all made, yeah, on site.
Speaker 1:But yeah, yeah. So he said that he they made it. We must have missed them making it. So they just had it all set out on the table. Um, and yeah, the guy's like we walk in and we're just like the guy's like, yeah it's all made, like okay. And then that was like some was like kind of like a weird, like silence, and then so then john says like so did you did you explain. So there was a woman, there was a woman in there.
Speaker 1:So the chef was there, and then in walks a woman and she's behaving very 21st century she's behind him, she's cleaning up, she says like sous chef or whatever that 18th century she's making like 21st century type quips about stuff and it's like real weird. She's got tattoos all over her arms, that wearing short sleeves with tattoos, and she's got a lip ring and she's behaving like you know, not like how a woman in the 18th century would talk.
Speaker 2:Well, maybe someone in the red light district, but maybe maybe, maybe I get it.
Speaker 1:I mean, she was being, she was just kind of like joking around and I hate it here, I don't know, she was just like making this weird Matt would say she was quiet quitting? I think she's quiet quitting yes.
Speaker 2:Very loudly.
Speaker 1:I think she's like not even putting any effort in. She's hoping she gets fired from the job and the lack of effort comes in.
Speaker 2:So I see all this food on the table, right, I look at it. I said, oh, you know, just like just starting conversations, oh, what are we making here?
Speaker 1:And what Stuff? Yeah, this woman just goes stuff and John's just like kind of taking it back, like okay. So then the cook kind of explains everything that he's doing. At that point we got yelled at by this woman and we're just like, okay, I don't want to be here anymore.
Speaker 2:She's trying to be funny. She's like, oh stuff, oh, I need stuff.
Speaker 1:That's the best effort she's putting forward.
Speaker 2:I paid $35 to hear you yell the word stuff at me and the guy did proceed to explain what it was and it did something that sounded pretty tasty, but she's like stuff.
Speaker 1:But then you know, but then you remember, remember at that one point. Then there was like this dessert, and I noticed that there too it looked like a hedgehog, it was like a, it was like a dessert made out of like marzipan I think, I think itppered almonds, yes, marzipan and slivered almonds made the spikes or whatever of a hedgehog.
Speaker 1:And when I walked in, I'll be honest, I thought, oh, is that a real hedgehog? But then I kind of looked closer. I'm like, yeah, they definitely just made that or whatever. And then the woman with the lip ring started going off about oh, there was a woman in here earlier today. She, she was upset with the port, like she. She said, like I don't know, I'm not happy with this, talking about the, the hedgehog and and I would say, do you really think that we have a hedgehog here? Do you really think that's a real hedgehog? I mean, look at it, it's obviously. She was getting like attitude about it, this in front of the people who paid $35 to come see your stupid show.
Speaker 2:We pay your salary. Lady Matt and I left. We walked out. I was over it pretty quickly.
Speaker 1:Mr R, poor guy got dunked on this whole trip, this whole trip to Williamsburg. I mean, he was not in his stride during Williamsburg.
Speaker 2:He stays. He's a very inquisitive guy. He's very inquisitive. He likes to understand hope, you know, let things percolate and ask questions good questions, like qualified questions, not like mine, rhetorical and arrogant. He'll ask questions that are like yeah, so what is this and how does that connect to this and so? But we're not there for this. We walk out of the kitchen and he's. He's left to his own devices. A few minutes go by and then we're outside. He comes out and he's like flabbergasted.
Speaker 1:He looks like he just got pantsed.
Speaker 2:Taken to school.
Speaker 1:Just seems dejected and we're like what happened, man? What's going on?
Speaker 2:And he says yeah, I don't know. I'm just in there, I was just asking this question. I see they had this contraption that had this rigging and this pot within here and basically it looked like, I think, what we would all describe in 21st century parlance as a rotisserie. And so that's what Mr R asked. He said, oh, is this like a rotisserie? And they and so that's what, uh, mr r asked said so, is this like a rotisserie? And they shouted back at him we're not french, we're british.
Speaker 2:To which, knowing mr r he would have been like okay, excuse me, I don't know the english word, that which I don't think. They then told him.
Speaker 1:I think they did show him how it works, but again just like rude. I think he just walked out like confused and we're just like let's get out of here.
Speaker 2:So we walked down the paved streets in the 18th century Williamsburg. Yeah, there were some horses. Guys on rollerblades. Guys on rollerblades.
Speaker 1:There was one guy driving a horse carriage. He had cornrows. I don't think that was a hairstyle from the 18th century, but I haven't confirmed that.
Speaker 2:And he wasn't speaking in dialect.
Speaker 1:I mean and again I don't care this woman with the lip ring and the tattoos. You can do whatever you want, but don't work at Williamsburg or, when you're working, cover your sleeves and take out your lip ring. I mean, it's not that complicated. You know, these people paid $35 to feel like they're in the 18th century and you're walking around with tattoos and a lip ring and a guy with cornrows Dude, you can't make your hair into cornrows. Maybe cornrows were. I haven't looked that up.
Speaker 2:It's possible, Maybe it starts somewhere, but it was getting late in the day, you know, the hours were going long. It started raining.
Speaker 1:Raining off and on so it started raining a little bit so we walked in. So how they designated buildings. So there are a lot of buildings, not all of them were open, so they designated what buildings were open. There was a cool like a I guess what colonial flag, colonial, colonial american flag, whatever tickets.
Speaker 2:There are a bunch of ticket shops to sell you things. They were, yeah, they were selling it was.
Speaker 1:They were selling a bunch of shops and tickets and experiences, all the stuff. They're selling everything, smith, but there's like nobody out, like there's no, there was nobody like in character, out amongst the streets like doing, yeah, like I thought it was gonna be like a theater somebody getting up on a soapbox.
Speaker 2:So gather, oh, hear thee, hear thee, gather, gather the british, the british lord read lord dunmore's proclamation declaring martial law. We must fight, push back like and they like us. You know you'd expect a crowd to gather, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're just lollygagging through this town on pavement.
Speaker 1:It's like a town. That's like a normal town, but just with old buildings that we paid $35 to get into. Some people were dressed funny, some people weren't, so anyway. So it started. They had like a little demonstration, more muskets demonstration. That was interesting. The one thing that was pretty cool is that, since there were horses going through the city, there was a lot of horse poop on the ground and the soldiers were marching right towards a big pile of horse poo.
Speaker 1:So we were up to three or the four of us were all like, oh man, are they going to step in it? Are they going to step in it? Because they were like marching in line and I think they were able to avoid it, correct? They?
Speaker 2:did and they didn't step. They didn't step sideways, they just stepped in between.
Speaker 1:I was, I was thoroughly impressed while they were playing their little fife and the drums and everything. Um, so, so it starts. So that's, it starts raining and we're like let's get out of the rain. So we walk into a courthouse and you know, because they had the flag, it was designated that it was open. So we walk in and I make the comment like oh yep, here to pay our taxes. And the lady in the front's like you didn't pay your taxes in the courthouse, you paid it in city hall. Like okay, I was just kidding, whatever, I'm just trying to make a joke. So we get in.
Speaker 1:So we get in here and you know we obviously are not interested. The courthouse is empty, there's nothing in it. And there's this guy who's dressed like a colonial, whatever, talking normal. Again, it's like, yeah, so here's the courthouse. He's like any questions? Like what? You didn't even say anything. I'm like, well, what's this, what's that? Like you know what? You know? He kind of started explaining it and then he was like this is where you. And then I asked the question like well, what kind of cases would be seen here? Like what kind of crimes? And he was saying like it was mostly like petty crimes, like you know, owing money and you know, small claims court, basically, would be here and Mr R decided to ask the question or make the comment or I don't know if it was a question or a comment, and it's something that he claims he read in Jamestown. He said I forget exactly how he worded it, john, but it was something like I read somewhere and he meant Jamestown. But he didn't say that.
Speaker 2:I read somewhere that slave owners who murder, who kill their slaves would not be charged a felony.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's what it was right. And the guy got very offended by the question and started going awful on Mr R, saying you can't listen to, you can't believe everything you read. It wasn't like that, it wasn't that bad. And I think he got, and I'm sure it happens to them all the time. Everyone wants to bring up, which is like Mr R maybe. I think maybe as seasoned amateur history enthusiasts, you know me we kind of know not to really bring up the S word in questions. You know, because you're just inviting questions, because I think it probably happens a lot where people are like weren't there slaves? It's a big topic of conversation, especially going to Colonial Williamsburg.
Speaker 1:So I think he was on defensive immediately when Mr R was just kind of asking a question I guess he was kind of getting at is that a crime? I guess that crime wouldn't have been tried here. Or is that a crime that would have been tried here because it wasn't considered a big deal back in the day? But the guy really didn't answer him and we kind of left with our tail. But then some, then other people came in and were like good, and we got out of there.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I asked him a question about common case law and we ended up down a thing and I was like, yeah, like we've heard any more British. And he's like man, well, we give us the British system.
Speaker 1:And it's like, well, we kind of talking present day politics a little bit and then it's like this is weird and let's get out of here. Like oh, it's not that much different than the Brit, you know. And it's kind of like, all right, whatever the rain had stopped, we got out of there. Another family came in, so we were good. There was literally nothing to see in this house. It was just. You know, you would think they would have had maybe.
Speaker 2:Or a clerk, even if he's doing real work, like a judge's clerk, maybe writing something on a paper, but doing real work, yeah oh welcome to the courthouse.
Speaker 1:We just saw this thing today, right, oh, we just saw. Oh, you just missed it. So-and-so got charged with so-and-so, we dealt with so-and-so and the whole thing can be set up.
Speaker 2:The two people at the front can be like oh yeah, no, they're just beginning to deliberate. Uh, if you wait a few minutes out here, you know we'll let you in and they do something on the half an hour, every half hour, every hour yeah everything should have been a thinker. And he's like nope, here you come on in, you got your little ticket, you got your little thing. You're a little 35. Thanks for the 35.
Speaker 1:We're giving you nothing for it, so we leave and then. So we're moseying around, mose around, and the only other thing that we really wanted to see was the Capitol building. The Capitol building, which is where the House of Burgesses would have met, which is the first organized political assembly in the history of.
Speaker 2:North America Oldest, continuous yeah.
Speaker 1:And that's kind of cool. Don't know if the building was original or not. I assume it wasn't. But the reason why we can't tell you is because we walk. So the, the governor's mansion, which is where you kind of walk into the park at, is where we did the tour. That was kind of cool. And the, the capital capital building yeah, that's what it is, capital buildings on like the opposite end of this, this main street, that's there.
Speaker 1:So, um, and we were kind of moseying around again. We had, we had, we didn't have our dinner. Reservation was until 6 45. So we're trying to like kill time kind of try to find something that we'd be interested in. Stopped at some shops, looking at some stuff and, you know, stopped in that stupid courthouse and so then're just. So we're moseying down the street and the flag that indicates that the Capitol building is open to tour is in the ground and there's a woman sitting next to it in colonial whatever, and we get 10 feet away from the entrance, do you think? Yep, and as soon as we're 10 feet away and the bell on the, the tower of the capitol building, rings to signify that it's 5 pm, and as soon as it rings, the woman in colonial outfit, lifts the flag out of the ground, goes in the gate, closes it, locks it and says have a good night guys, and walks away.
Speaker 2:It's all smiling at us the whole time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just smiling, ha, ha, ha ha, and I couldn't believe what had just happened.
Speaker 2:It was like the final straw.
Speaker 1:I couldn't believe what had happened.
Speaker 2:And mind. We're dragging mr r around again. Massad had a rough go with his knee.
Speaker 1:We're dragging him along, mr w has zero interest in history. We're trying to. So me and john, as the amateur history enthusiasts and podcast hosts and you know it's our passion to make history fun for people are trying're trying our best to do it. But I'll tell you what Williamsburg wasn't helping, and when this happened, I just turned around. I can't believe it. I don't know what to do. I'm just disgusted.
Speaker 1:I was disgusted, I couldn't believe it. Now, granted, I'm a little upset. I'm I'm upset at myself for not having um looked it up prepared, but also maybe we could have said something to this lady like, hey, can we come in for like two minutes? I just want to see it. But I was so upset and so, like mad, I didn't even want to give her the satisfaction of like begging to give her that power. You know what I mean. I didn't want to give her that power.
Speaker 2:Well, the whole thing was just very tone deaf, I feel like the whole setup of Williamsburg. They just knew once they had your money, they had you and they just didn't have to feel like, oh sorry guys Like, sorry guys, we closed the debt at five. I'm sorry, sorry you guys meaning to come in here and we're like, yeah, like can we go in?
Speaker 2:sorry, like we have a heart-stripped five o'clock policy, which which is not yours didn't say it in the brochure a bunch of these shops, so they have like these. The maps they give out are good for two weeks. They've got like two weeks um of like programming and then they come out with new maps, I guess throughout the summer, and on the map it just said capital and it didn't say open from 10 to 5, like it didn't say the whole park's open till 9.
Speaker 1:But then these select places yeah, but the park is open till 9, which is not really even a park because it's open to, just like the surrounding streets. I don't know, you could just walk in off the street, not pay 35 to get in, but then you couldn't get yelled at by the guy in the courthouse about uh, asking about slavery. So I don't know if that's what you want to pay for.
Speaker 2:So we're standing out here and we we go off. To the side of the building there's people funneling out, so it's not like they're not. I don't see the woman who closed the gate. She's not shooing people away. It's like there's still people in the building finishing up their tour, which looked self-guided. So they're coming out and we're standing there and, just like you know, tail between our legs, like what are we going to do now? Like it's, it's five o'clock, we have an hour and 45 minutes to our reservations, like where are we going?
Speaker 1:and there's like like there's literally nothing to do, like you can't even find anything to do here. And I later looked up and this is my mistake again I later looked up that it does say on the website that everything closes at 5. It doesn't say on the brochure. I don't know why they keep the place. They advertise it being open until 9 if it closes at 5. But whatever.
Speaker 1:So long story short, we were very upset. We ended up being able to. Luckily, mr W got online and booked an earlier reservation for dinner and we just went right in right after that complete letdown and had dinner. We had dinner at King's Arms Tavern, which was it was supposed to be fair from the 18th century, I think. We all ordered water, or somebody said I'll stick with water instead of getting a beer or whatever. And the waitress was like oh, that's fancy, very fancy for you to have water. They'd be forcing you to drink beer back in the 18th century. And it was like okay, we were done, done, we're done. We weren't in the mood. We're just like okay, but we were there mid julep, which I hate.
Speaker 1:I don't know why I even got that and had like the worst whiskey. They used the worst. Whatever, I'm not going to complain about because the food was very good it was a little.
Speaker 2:We were amped up. We were am up. We have to be honest with our fans here. We were amped up for this one particular menu item which was which one?
Speaker 1:Well, there was two Peanut soup, peanut soup as an appetizer and our waitress actually said people come from. Now, this is another area where I didn't really know if she was being in character or not. She said people come from miles away to try our peanut soup and I'm like are you just? Is that like?
Speaker 2:Because miles away would have been a big deal.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, but I got the peanut soup and it was very good. It was like a liquidy, toned down peanut butter.
Speaker 2:With chicken broth.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It was like peanut butter mixed with chicken?
Speaker 1:yeah, or vegetable broth. I think it was vegetable broth, wasn't it?
Speaker 2:yeah, but I believe your first bite. You thought it was the most disgusting thing you ever had. I thought you bit into some ginger.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think I've been into some ginger which I don't like and I was like very upset and then like after everything I'm but ended up being very I loved it, I loved it. I want to try to make it myself. I'd recommend anybody. If you ever see peanut soup on the menu, if you like peanut butter, you should get that. But the meal was fine. It was good. It was good food. I got prime rib, john got a steak. There was what did Hen? I think the other two had hen Hen, yeah yeah. So it was fun.
Speaker 1:We get dessert, bread, bread, bread pudding. There was a dessert. So like they had like the they had. They had like an excerpt from the, from like what you would assume would be like recipes or whatever like of the fair to like describe it and they said where they were from. So like some of the things were just kind of generic, like 17, you know, 80, whatever, like like a recipe book or whatever. But there was one item that was from the chef of Thomas Jefferson and that was a dessert and it was snow eggs which was basically like meringue. That looked good. Mr R had that and he said it was very good.
Speaker 2:We got bread pudding, which was also quite nice.
Speaker 1:Did you get bread pudding too? I did. Yeah, the bread pudding was good, so that was good. I mean, if it wasn't for that, Williamsburg would have been a 0 out of 10. King's Arms Tavern brought it to like a 2 out of 10.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the crazy thing is.
Speaker 1:Even if it was free to get in, I would have hated it, let alone you're.
Speaker 2:So 35 a person baffling that no one's ever said. Everyone seems to have said they love it oh, yeah, my family there. I love it.
Speaker 1:Your co-worker was a big fan yeah, I had a co-worker, so I I think the only thing that I can defend and that why we can't really comment on I'll never go back to find this out. Maybe if I have a mutual friend who I might trust their opinion about it, I would ask if we got there earlier, maybe it would have been a little bit more active and a little bit more Maybe if the weather was nicer, if we got there earlier in the day or maybe earlier later in the season it's it is before memorial day still. So like me and like I think the tickets are a little discounted I think it's normally like fifty dollars to get in in the in the I know. So like maybe we just off off season, but like it shouldn't be, like I didn't do enough, I went into it assuming that it was more of a historical thing than just like kind of like some BS attraction tourist trap.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:They could have done a much better job of blending history with theater.
Speaker 2:Basically is all you're asking for. I don't think that's too much to ask, but I think honestly. I do think, like 40 or 50 years ago, I think more people would have gotten into it and I do think the events of the past five years, post COVID.
Speaker 2:I wouldn't be surprised if all that the modern politics I think has spilled into it and I just feel like people are a little more toned down. They're all in eggshells to like really kind of get it like the guy in the courthouse. But, um, yeah, so we, we left for dinner. We left dinner. We had to walk all the way back out. Um, and let's just say, once we got back to the 21st century, we were thrilled. We tried to walk back into the visitor center that had closed, so we had to walk all the way around.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was bad.
Speaker 2:You were striking out every which way.
Speaker 1:On our way out, though it was kind of fitting to see there was a guy using a hoop uh push, like using that, like uh, a hoop, like a hoop, and stick pushing a hoop, a hoop down the street and like no, I don't know if I am, and then there were also people who apparently live in these, some of these houses, and we didn't get that.
Speaker 1:Like they live there. They're 80 families, you know, and this guy's pushing the street Like there was no, I mean, but that's kind of what I thought it was going to be. I think there was going to be a lot of that, like a lot of people do, like playing, like playing, living their life.
Speaker 2:Living their life, living a colonial life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like, and with like in front of nobody, so I didn't really. I tried cheering him on and he ignored me, so but yeah, that was it for williamsburg. I can't not recommend that enough, or I can't what would you say like? Unrecommend, disrecommend?
Speaker 2:cannot recommend it anymore if I tried to no.
Speaker 1:I cannot not, you can't not recommend it. That would be you can't recommend it yeah. Don't go to Williamsburg. That's all I can say about that. Very disappointing Waste of money, waste of time, and I felt bad for the people that we drug along with us.
Speaker 2:Sorry, Mr R and Mr W, you were great at sports, so that was our night. So from now we had a 50-minute drive back to our Airbnb because we were staying in the town of Quentin.
Speaker 1:Which Tim Coyne, our great tour guide from Shorewood Forest, was not pleased with us staying there. It happened to be closer to Richmond, which was convenient for one of us for one trip, but that's okay. It was a lot of driving, so we drove back and then that was it for that day, and then the last day. I don't know. Am I missing anything?
Speaker 2:I don't think anything else happened leaving Williamsburg. No, I think that's pretty much it, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So in the last day, the last leg of the historic triangle is the Battle of Yorktown. As I said, Battle of Yorktown is so there's actually two different attractions in Yorktown for this. There's a museum, the Yorktown Revolutionary War Museum, and then the Yorktown National Battlefield. Now we took the lesson that we learned from the Jamestown debacle and we said we're not going to that museum, we're just going to go to the National Park. It'll be better. So we went to the National Park. We drove there like a 55-minute drive in the morning and it was a breath of fresh air. I got to be honest and I think what we realized is the people in Yorktown know that this is the last leg that people do. It's the last chronologically, so Jamestown is set in like the 1610s.
Speaker 2:Like it starts at 1610s.
Speaker 1:Williamsburg is the 1774, like right before the revolution. Now Yorktown is about the end of 1781.
Speaker 2:Yeah 1781.
Speaker 1:And also there's a little bit of Civil War stuff that happened there too. So I think they know like this is the last leg, and they know that everyone's been beaten up Again, similar to when we saw that family in Williamsburg. I think they're like these guys have just been through it all. Let's just, let's really.
Speaker 2:Let's help them out, let's take them in with open arms.
Speaker 1:So Yorktown's $15 a person to get in, which I was shocked that a National Historical Park was charging money. I've never seen that before. Valley Forge, near us, does not charge anything. Saratoga didn't charge anything. I couldn't believe that they charged money to get into that. But again, it's more of a touristy trap than really historic. They're definitely leaning into the fact that people come down.
Speaker 2:Well, they could get away because of the other competition. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:But the guy was nice. I bought the tickets and he's like there's four of you. I'm like, yeah, he's like, is there four of you? I'm like, yeah, he's like, I'm going to give you the year-long pass for $45 instead of $60. And it'll get you guys all in. And it's a year-long pass, you can use it for just this park. It's called the Colonial National Park, so it included Jamestown with an E and Yorktown, which would have been nice to know.
Speaker 1:But we did get that. So we got a little bit of a break and it was the most refreshing. He was nice, asked some questions. He talked trash on Jamestown a little bit. He's like, yeah, jamestown without an E that we went to. He's like, yeah. I asked if we could use this pass in Jamestown with an E. He said, yeah, he's like, but you can't use the other one that's run by the state. He gave a little like you don't want to go, like, you know we don't. I don't have anything. We don't have anything to do with that nonsense that's going on over there. So that felt good. It was very refreshing to have this guy be a little bit real with us for once. Um and again. I think they just know like these, everyone's been through the ringer, kind of similar, I guess. I guess, maybe, maybe that's how the the um colonial soldiers felt in Yorktown, just through the ringer for the last five years.
Speaker 2:that's what they wanted to bring you through. That was the taking back they wanted to convey like it was going through Jamestown. Yeah they like, make you just drudge you along. Instead of drudging you along the trenches, they're drudging you along from like one tourist trap and then spit you out to Yorktown.
Speaker 2:Yeah, then there you are. So we had some time. So, after we're talking to this guy again, all these places had films, short films, before them. So there was another film starting soon that would kind of just again give you the whole backstory of Yorktown, you know, the days leading up to it, the aftermath and all the troop movements and all that stuff, days leading up to it, the aftermath and all the all the troop movements and all that stuff, kind of just painting the picture. Before you went out to the actual did the driving tour. So we had some time and they had an on-site, uh, the museum not a museum like the, like exhibition, just things, certain things and there was like this, like a replica ship which you could walk through, which was neat. They had other documentation and some letters and yeah, so Matt and I were just walking along and you know we turn and we come to this window and it looks something like you could sleep in. I see what is this, and so this looks like something you could put a bed in, a tent perhaps.
Speaker 2:Maybe a desk, maybe a stool.
Speaker 1:And it's a tent.
Speaker 2:And so we start to read the placard in front of it, and wouldn't you know?
Speaker 1:it said here is George Washington's tent, and we said to ourselves didn't we see that in Philadelphia?
Speaker 2:In an amphitheater.
Speaker 1:And we're told not to take pictures, and it was treated like it was right in front of us.
Speaker 2:It was behind glass. It was a tent.
Speaker 1:I don't know if it was just one tent but it wasn't all floor-to-floor and it was a real tent.
Speaker 2:Part of it was the real tent Part of it was a real tent, and then you kept walking a little bit and then you walked in to what Matt was.
Speaker 1:All that Matt was asking for when we were in Philadelphia seeing Washington's tent there was being able to walk through it or get some semblance of what it looks like from the inside, have it set up with all of this stuff, and we were actually inside the tent. I mean you could see his desk and everything. It was definitely a full circle moment for us.
Speaker 2:And it was like in case, like it wasn't. You weren't standing in the tent, but it was a cutout and you had like glass above you, glass ceiling above you and glass in front of you and you'd see like George Washington, property of George Washington, like next to a cot and like papers on a desk and a feather pen, a quilt pen or whatever.
Speaker 1:And just like cool, that was actually pretty cool and that would have been really cool to see in the america. I mean, that's exactly what the it should have been but it's in the museum of the american revolution, not to go back to that, but all these places that have like sponsorships by like either private enterprise that's for private, yeah for profit.
Speaker 2:Stuff is just crazy. It's off the.
Speaker 1:Because they get you in there and they don't, you know, they don't care. It's a shame. So we get to the movie. I think the one thing the federal government does better than the private sector, it seems like Maybe.
Speaker 2:Maybe, so we get into the film and I think the film was the best we saw. Yeah.
Speaker 1:But the three too. It too it kind of did the best job of kind of summarizing how we got to yorktown.
Speaker 2:yeah, apparently it was well produced. I didn't know, yeah, I didn't know for our family. I didn't know. Um, it was a siege basically. So, like lauren cord wallace, um was basically pinned in yorktown and you had the french navy in the chesapeake, the entrance to the Chesapeake Bay. They took out the British there and so they hemmed in Cornwallis and then Washington and Rochambeau gave the British forces up in New York the slip kind of fawned an attack up there and came down in Virginia and then they kind of pinned them in and Hamilton was really instrumental and Lafayette was Alexander Hamilton.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Yepette was.
Speaker 2:Alexander Hamilton. Markito Lafayette played in it.
Speaker 1:So all the heavy hitters, all the big characters obviously yeah, and it was just kind of like he was the Cornwallis, was surrounded.
Speaker 2:It was cool, very cool place to be, and so the video did a really good job of conveying what we're going to get ourselves into. So we get out, and then we saw a cannon. What was that cannon about? Whose cannon was that?
Speaker 1:it was the cannon that lafayette hugged oh yeah oh, it was a cannon that he had fired or was fired from his division or whatever he was coming no, he, he remembered seeing that, he recognized it because a British cannon had dented it Right and he had recognized that. He saw that happen, I guess, and when he came back for his tour of America in like the 18.
Speaker 2:1824. 1824.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he saw it and hugged it Like he got very emotional overseeing it because he remembered that moment. Yeah, forgot about that, remembered that moment. Yeah, I forgot about that. That was cool, yeah. And then you can do a self-guide tour.
Speaker 1:Now we don't have a great track record, john, and I don't have a great track record, as the fans may remember from the Saratoga incident, of guided tours self-guided car tours, vehicular tours to be exact. But we gave it another shot and that's what my biggest complaint about Saratoga was. It's such a big property and they didn't want, they didn't have enough roads to be able to see everything. You had to park your car and get out at every single spot to see what you're looking at. That wasn't really the case here.
Speaker 1:I feel like they did a really good job. They built roads through the battlefield. They had a self-guided tour on the phone. They had an app that you could just click on all the things and you listen to it and explain it. Well, you could see everything from the car it described like well, you're here to your right, is this to your left, is this right in front? You know, and they're explaining it and you know there's not. I mean, in reality there's not really much to see in these battlefields, it's all just land now, but they're like kind of painting the picture and you could do that from the car. Mr r had a uh, a bum knee again, so like we couldn't do a ton of walking and like I think we're all kind of spent from the whole history thing anyway. So it was kind of a really nice way to to see it.
Speaker 2:I think um, and I will say one thing as an aside I do think like these battlefields are ripe for like augmented reality.
Speaker 1:I think if you can get, a pair of glasses and you show up with the augmented reality situation.
Speaker 2:It just overlays, like dude that'd be now if you look north and like it has a compass in them and it tells you which degree to look at, and then you're looking at this degree on the compass in the on your glasses like and they could have it rebuilt just starts like appearing characters just start coming out of the woodwork. That would really cool, do a lot, I think, just thinking about that. But um yeah, so we just cruised through.
Speaker 1:We just cruised through there it was was a really nice drive too through the woods. They had a really cool road that went right through. It was a very nice drive.
Speaker 2:Overlooking the river, overlooking the York River. Yeah, it was very pretty.
Speaker 1:We stopped at the Moore House, which is where Washington and I guess Cornwallis did he, show up, I forget. That's where they came to terms with the surrender at Yorktown, I think so, wasn't it.
Speaker 2:He didn't show up for Washington. He claimed he was sick.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know, but that's where the. I don't know if Cornwallis was there, but that's where the terms were written up, I think in Morehouse.
Speaker 2:No, they were written up there, but they didn't necessarily.
Speaker 1:That's not where the british surrendered, no they surrendered in surrender field that you saw oh. But I think after the fact, like after the surrender, the terms of the surrender, whatever were agreed to at more house, I think, which we drove up there, it's like this nice little farm house, it's pretty cool. I park, we pull, we pull up to it and I'm like I think we can go in there. And john's like, oh, yeah, definitely we can go in there. I said okay, so I parked the car, we got out, couldn't get in. There was no way we were getting into that house, so we just got back in the car and continued the drive. But it was fun.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I saw a nice monument, a pretty, a really cool monument from the 1880s, the yorktown victory monument. Uh, really decorative, huge, it's like what? 100 feet tall.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, Right on the river. Lady Liberty's on the top.
Speaker 2:Lady Liberty's up there. And, yeah, yorktown today it's a historical town as well and it's modeled as such, and they had a pirates exhibition going on. It was the day we were there.
Speaker 1:That was pretty weird.
Speaker 2:but yeah, shooting off cannons, that was pretty neat. Yeah, I'm shooting off cannons. Um, that was pretty neat.
Speaker 1:We had a good lunch. I mean, the town of yorktown was cool. There were babes and bikinis out on the beach yeah, that was probably the most.
Speaker 2:That was probably the most bachelor party we got and, if I recall correctly, you know they had ice cream shops, matt, didn't they have an ice cream shop there?
Speaker 1:well, yeah, so there's a shuttle that takes you from the national park that to downtown, to the downtown yorktown, which worked out really well because parking wasn't great downtown so I'd recommend anybody go down there. This was mr r's decision, which was great. I'm glad we would. I would never thought of it myself. He said why don't we just take the trolley down and come back? We don't have to worry about parking. Um, so we were waiting for the trolley so we had time to kill kill in this main street of Yorktown, which this area specifically wasn't necessarily historic. It was like a block or two up from the river beach that it gets more historical. But this area it's got some shops and everything. And, like I said, I had booked this.
Speaker 1:I planned this trip using ChatGPT and the last thing it said was get some coffee or ice cream at Ben Jerry's in town. And I'm like, oh, I love ice cream, ben Jerry's. It'd be interesting to see what kind of flavors they have. I had to go to the bathroom, so I go in there just to use their bathroom. I wanted to look at their menu just to see if they had any interesting flavors that I haven't seen or tried before, and I got approached right away. It was a small place and I felt obligated to order something. So I ordered a small dish of my favorite flavor that you can get everywhere Chunky Monkey, a small dish and I paid for it and it was $8.79 for a little like one scoop of this ice cream that you could get anywhere.
Speaker 1:I actually looked and it was a pint of that. Is was going for two for ten dollars at my local supermarket. So I got I was flabberg. I know you pay more, I get it, but you'd think they'd have. They would have had flavors that I never saw before or it would have been like, I don't know, the Spirit of 76 Swirl. I mean I knew it was. I guess it's a chain. I didn't really know Ben Jerry's had chain like Haagen-Dazs. It was like a Haagen-Dazs but with Ben Jerry's I didn't know that that existed. I thought it was like going to be a little bit more of a. I don't know. I figured it was going to be, I don't know, six dollars tops for a small cone in a cup.
Speaker 1:It wasn't even a cone, it was in a cup. I couldn't believe it, but I but I felt the need to complete the chat.
Speaker 2:GPT itinerary itinerary and when the machines take over, you'll be in their good graces and they'll be like oh, somebody actually listens to us, thank you, but I mean I couldn't really Yorktown was.
Speaker 1:I mean you're not going to drive all the way down there just for Yorktown. No, I mean it's not.
Speaker 2:And Williamsburg and Jamestown know that. They know that fact.
Speaker 1:That's how I get you. I think Yorktown, Yorktown was definitely the best. I would recommend that to anybody to go see Yorktown. I think it's a pretty cool spot. It looks nothing like what it looks like in the movie Revolution if anyone had seen that which was filmed in England on cliffs. There's no cliffs, it's just kind of. It's just kind of.
Speaker 2:it's just kind of like a jet, it's like. It's like, yeah, rolls off, it's like a rolling bumper slope.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but yeah, good views. We had a good day. It was a nice drive, it was just something cool to see. But I, yeah, you're not going to just try it. You wouldn't want to drive six hours to see Yorktown.
Speaker 2:Now a question If you're in the area, Could you pair Yorktown with just John Tyler's house and the White House of the Confederacy? Would that get you down here six hours?
Speaker 1:I don't know that's a good question Maybe.
Speaker 2:Those are my three favorite things.
Speaker 1:I'll say that if your question is, would I have had a better time if we didn't do Williamsburg and Jamestown, my answer is 100% yes a follow up question is what if they replaced the historic triangle of Virginia with the Confederate White House and John Tyler's house? And Yorktown, if that was the actual triangle it doesn't really make a triangle, though I don't think more like a line in Yorktown. If that was the actual triangle.
Speaker 2:It doesn't really make a triangle, though I don't think More like a line, it's cool.
Speaker 1:What stinks is like Jamestown, williamsburg. We were closer to Richmond, where we were staying. I feel like we could have seen a lot more in Richmond.
Speaker 1:We probably could have spent more time looking at seeing cooler stuff on that day than going to james jamestown, williamsburg, I would never. And if I were to do it again and we were going to stop out there, but we ended up not, we ended up bailing like I would be interested to see how much better jamestown with an e is than jamestown with no e, but um you know if I were to do it.
Speaker 1:Oh sorry, go ahead. If we were to do it again, I would. If I were to do it again, if I were to plan it the right way, I would do no williamsburg, I would do jamestown with an e, and that was probably the only change that would make.
Speaker 2:Did you know that Williamsburg has an international airport, newport?
Speaker 1:News slash.
Speaker 2:Williamsburg International Airport.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think I do remember seeing that when we were talking about planning it I was like, well, they could fly in there, but it was probably pretty tough to not many. I don't know.
Speaker 2:We also passed what looked like the biggest naval yard I'd ever seen weapon stations I'd ever seen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was cool crazy.
Speaker 2:I'm looking at the map right now.
Speaker 1:It's massive but yeah, so, yeah, so, yeah. So then the end of so that was it. I think it was, it was fun. I mean, you know, again, I'm glad we did it, so the we did it, so the fans don't have to, if they certainly can go into it with more eyes wide open, of getting a more real depiction of what it, what to expect if you go there.
Speaker 2:I think we can say that that t-shirt we saw really was accurate, that Jamestown or Virginia is for history lovers. If you love history, it's a cool plan.
Speaker 1:It is it's fun to history lovers you love history.
Speaker 2:It's a cool place.
Speaker 1:It's fun to be there. It's cool. It was cool. It was fun Interesting being in the salad. Like I said, the swamps around there were pretty cool to see something you don't see up here, and interesting Just meeting the characters Timmy and the guy hoeing the tobacco fields Quick shout out to Airbnb host too, who parked us in there for three nights.
Speaker 1:Yeah, did a great job. Had a hot tub. Had a hot tub. He greeted us with a bottle of Martinelli sparkling apple juice. Is it apple cider apple juice juice? John stole two of them from him.
Speaker 2:sorry for that if you listen to this, what we gonna do it was.
Speaker 1:it was a nice spot, it worked out, everything worked out really well and I had a good time. Won't get into specifics of. I mean it was fun, like it was a nice spot, it worked out, everything worked out really well and I had a good time.
Speaker 2:Won't get into the specifics of I mean it was fun. Anything we do, it's the banter that we have amongst ourselves makes the trip.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's the company or whatever they say, but Williamsburg sucked and don't go there, man. I was so mad.
Speaker 2:But the thing is, there's another part of Williamsburg which is like a modern town, which is way better. That's where William and Mary is right. We just went there for drinks and lunch, yeah well, I will say that too.
Speaker 1:Maybe that's a good point. John, if you do want to go to Williamsburg, if you do want to do it like if you find yourself among the historic triangle of Virginia, I would recommend because you can go downtown Williamsburg William Mary is, and it seemed like kind of a nice little quaint town, modern, but it was a nice little quaint town and maybe go there, get some drinks, have some. You know like, go there, get some drinks, have some, get dinner there or lunch there or whatever, and you can just walk right into Colonial Williamsburg. The streets are connected, so you don't need admission to get into the Colonial Williamsburg section. The only thing that you really need tickets for are the tours the governor's mansion tour that was good, except when we got yelled at by a lady with a lip ring, and the Capitol building that we got denied access to, like Jesus at the Inn or Mary and Joseph at the Inn on Christmas. That's kind of what I felt like um, and so like you could just go, I assume, like you could just go there and have fun.
Speaker 2:I mean, I don't think anyone's checking tickets, maybe when it gets busy, I don't know, and I don't know if you really even need a ticket to get in definitely don't buy the ticket just to see the john d rockefeller movie, that's for sure you could see that without a ticket, I think he could have just walked in and walked into that movie theater, that's true.
Speaker 1:Anyway, the only time anyone checked for a ticket was to get into the governor's mansion. I'm not going to tell you guys what to do, but take that for what it's worth.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You got anything else to leave them with John?
Speaker 2:No, guys, we're just. I was happy to get another one in for you and, like I said, we had to. We saw too much history in three days to not do another podcast, so uh is this going to be the last one?
Speaker 1:you think?
Speaker 2:No, no, you got this thing for another 12 months, 11 months we'll definitely come, yeah, something I was thinking and I'm not, this doesn't have to go on air or whatever but I was thinking like maybe we could do I don't know how long it would last, but we could do like a like this is like what it, what it looked like, what was like the history and context of each state joining the union, and do like two or three a week, or like whenever we do a show, do like three of them every state all 50 yeah well, we can start like 14, or we can just wrap up 13.
Speaker 2:well, we could do like the context behind North Carolina. North Carolina didn't sign the Declaration, it didn't sign the Constitution until 1780, whatever 89.
Speaker 1:We could do the 13 colonies first. That'd be interesting.
Speaker 2:And not just do one a week, do a handful, do five, four a week or whatever.
Speaker 1:Well, depending on the state, texas would be a long one.
Speaker 2:Texas could be its own one, and we could talk about their flag can hint at their flag we could do.
Speaker 1:We could do each state's flag and national animal and song and all that stuff too. When we talk about each state, it it's a good idea.
Speaker 2:I think, about the historical context of the times. I think we kind of the two for one. Maine and Missouri are going to be the same episode, because that was the compromise that was made. Good idea, I was just thinking about it.
Speaker 1:Fans. Let us know if that's what you want to do. If you think you'd be interested in that, shoot us a text. Or, or uh, email, uh, at nailing history, pod at gmailcom. Or, you know, hit us up at twitter at nailing history and, you know, as always, hit that link in the description and send us a text. Just make sure that when you hit that link, that you don't delete anything that auto populates in the text message that hasn't changed fans.
Speaker 2:There is some consistency in this world. There is some continuity. Don't delete the tag, don't delete the text. Yeah, we'll keep saying it. Like tim coin, we'll keep Don't touch it, don't touch it. Like great Tim Coyne, don't touch it.
Speaker 1:Lesson learned. Leave it there. All right, fans, we'll see you in the next one, maybe, if there is going to be one.
Speaker 2:Stay curious, you know it. As always, later, all right.
Speaker 1:I got hairy legs. Come on, man, and we say bye, bye.