Home of the Confederacy...

After 11 grueling hours on the road, we finally made it to Richmond and stopped for the night. Stayed at a Comfort Inn on Broad Road, it was adequate and quiet. We arrived around 9:00pm and not much was open, but the hotel clerk directed us across the street to a place called Byram's. To be honest, it didn't look too promising and it was quite threadbare inside. However, we were pleasantly surprised by the menu and our waiter was as chipper and friendly as if he had just started his shift. I took a chance on grouper and it turned out very good. Overall, we were quite pleased with Byram's, although it would be hard to recommend just based on aesthetics.

The next morning, I went down to the lobby to score some coffee and discovered that they shut down the free breakfast (and any chance to get coffee) at 9:30am. I ran back upstairs and went on the web to find the nearest Starbucks. It was about 5 blocks away and so I jumped in the car to head over there.

The Starbucks is in a very charming old neighborhood near an elegant street called Monument Street. It is two lanes of street separated by a beautiful, lushly landscaped promenade with a Civil War monument in a traffic island every two blocks. The one that sticks in my memory is Stonewall Jackson on horseback and the inscription says "Killed At Chancellorsville 1863". Both sides of the street are lined with large, old homes of the architecture predominate in the Old South at the turn of the 20th century. They are mostly brick, two to three stories and have large front porches decorated with white wooden columns or railings. Huge oak trees lined both sides and the promenade is grass dotted with beautiful dogwood and ornamental plum trees. The side streets off Monument Street are dotted with businesses like Starbucks and little boutique restaurants. It is an absolutely beautiful old neighborhood. If you ever get to Richmond, Monument Street is just a couple of blocks off I95 and well worth the drive though.