This Is A Lake - A travel blog

Today it was rainy and cold, not particularly inviting for walking around, so I sought refuge indoors and spent the best part of the day going from one museum to another. First on the list was the Edgar Allan Poe Museum. Unbeknownst to me, Poe lived in Richmond and may even have written The Raven here. None of his known residences have survived; the museum occupies instead the oldest remaining house in Richmond. It is comprised of three or four tiny houses around a quiet manicured garden, insouciantly patrolled by two black cats, and each building displays objects that belonged to Poe or his relatives. The text beside each display did a great job of weaving in the story of his life and his works. There was so much I didn’t know: that he was an orphan and that he took the name Allan from his foster family, who nevertheless did not adopt him and left him out of the will; that despite his celebrity there are entire chunks of his life we know nothing about, most notably his unexplained dea

Today, greeted with a sunny if rather chilly morning, I was left to my own devices, and so I took the chance to walk over to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. I arrived shortly after they opened at 10:00, and I figured I could see the whole place at my leisure in a couple of hours, eat something and then do something else for the afternoon. Reader, I was wrong! I was shocked to find not only that the museum itself as well as its collection are enormous, but also that they have solid exhibits on about a dozen different themes. First I encountered a few rooms about European religious and Baroque paintings, which I don’t particularly care for, got my bearings on the map, and moved on to more interesting sections. Probably the most unexpected was a full collection of Fabergé jewellery, including his famous eggs but also cigarette cases, medallions, handles for canes and umbrellas, decorative flowers... It was a strangely familiar experience to be looking at Fabergé eggs in Richmond, Virgin

My first day in Richmond, my first day of this trip, was cold but sunny. Ed, Sudha and RJ regaled me with a king’s breakfast (homemade pancakes included, forever grateful) and then we set off for our first adventure: Monticello, the retirement home and plantation of the 3rd US president, Thomas Jefferson. Monticello is about an hour’s drive away from Richmond, near the (now sadly infamous) town of Charlottesville, and although advance tickets had already sold out for the day, they do have a few walk-in tickets that you can buy on the spot. The site, built on top of a hill with ample views over the surrounding areas, features a visitor centre with exhibits and a café, several cabins and slave quarters, the Jefferson family cemetery and, of course, Jefferson’s mansion itself. It is a beautiful, modest structure that combines the red brick you might expect from New England colonial buildings with Greek columns and friezes. The columns and the peculiar octagonal dome are what gives the bui