My apologies Birdie, I hadn't been back to the site until today as I'm going to search and post. Sometimes I just can't cruise here and the Europe board without getting crazy plans in mind!

Anyhow, if you're referring to Colonial Williamsburg I liked it much better than I had anticipated. Unfortunately we planned our day poorly, got there later in the morning and didn't get to experience all there was before they closed up at 5:00. I grew up in Massachusetts, had been to Sturbridge Village a fair amount of times and was expecting something like that. I was surprised to find that the area is just inserted into Williamsburg with connecting streets (accessible only in the evening) for motor traffic. We arrived from the welcome center just as one of the brief (free) orientation walking tours began and decided to participate. I'd suggest doing that.

We chose Williamsburg as a base for a few nights because of the opportunity to hit so many historical areas. We stayed at the Holiday Inn Express; clean, new, breakfast included. Lots and lots of lodging choices so the prices were competitive.

If I'm remembering correctly we did Colonial Williamsburg on day one.

Day two I wanted to see a plantation and we headed toward Shirley Plantation. On the way back we sidetracked over the bridge to Petersburg and drove the battlefield, had a late lunch on a gorgeous day, sitting outside at Andrade International Restaurant (on the recommendation of our Fodor's Guide!)(I also highly recommend). At that point the other plantations were closed so we just pulled in and looked. At Westover we checked out the grounds but I felt weird walking around their house and the horse flies were awful!

Check-out day we headed toward Jamestown and went to the actual site, not the recreation. We love archeology; there was active digging and a volunteer who provided information and answered all our questions. After that we headed toward Yorktown and drove half of that battlefield. We were quite pressed for time as we needed to get our rental car back.

I had been hoping to get a little beach time in during our stay but we were too busy!

Oh, and on our way to Williamsburg, we stopped in Fredericksburg, toured both George Washington's mother's and sister's homes and ate at Sammy T's (we opted for the smoke free annex which was a mistake, I think I could have suffered the smoky atmosphere for the ambiance; the annex is dull and dirty; the food was FABULOUS!).

Nothing had been preplanned, very unusual for me (hence the original post about restaurants) and this part of the trip worked out very well.

Let me know if there's anything more specific I can tell you.