Sue at the U of VA quad. Stanford must have copied this idea for their quad.

A few days before leaving Richmond I called and got a 2 PM “behind the scenes” tour that includes the normal downstairs rooms but also goes to the 2nd and 3rd floors of Jefferson’s house. Monticello is only an hour from Richmond, so we got there in the morning on Monday April 27 and first visited the University of Virginia that Jefferson designed. After that we had lunch in the Miche tavern. We had a great guide for Jefferson’s house and learned and saw a lot.

Sue on Jefferson’s back porch.

Around 4:30 we left for Washington, DC. The GPS took us on back roads that went past a number of really beautiful horse farms. If I were a horse, there’s now no question where I would want to live. We enjoyed that drive as much as anything else that day.

For planning no more than a few days in advance we did pretty well in DC. The main thing was getting a reasonably priced hotel not too far out. We ended up at the Capitol Skyline about a mile south of the Capitol. It’s not too far from where we would dock our boat if we bring it up the Potomac next year. They had a morning shuttle from 7 to 10 that would deliver us anywhere around the mall. A cab ride back averaged $10.