Country roads take me home to the place that I love: West Virginia...

Wanna see like 40 pics of our adventure from last weekend?  Probably not.  You might murder me for making the page take an hour to load in your window. 

Part two of our Christmas appreciation month!  When we got back from our Thanksgiving shenanigans and had had a day to unwind, I asked L if we could take a Christmas road trip to either Williamsburg or The Greenbriar in West Virginia (both known for being completely out of control - in a good way - at Christmas).  He immediately took the lead and started researching what events would be going on in both places during the weekend we'd targeted for travel and came up with the plan to drive to WV and spend Saturday afternoon at The Greenbriar and then head to Charlottesville (about halfway between where we live and White Sulphur, WV - home of The Greenbriar) for dinner and lodging.  People, the Greenbriar = A. MAZE. ING.  I don't really know how else to describe it.  It's just so opulent.  It's like an extra, extra, extra luxurious version of what would happen if The Overlook (the hotel from The Shining) and the "resort" from Dirty Dancing had a baby.  It makes the Dirty Dancing resort look like extra W.T. 

The general decor is modern Victorian chic - think lots of florals and stripes and insane crystal chandeliers everywhere- except an updated version of whatever is in your head.  Pictures online made me wonder if we were going to a hotel that was awesome in the 90s (think Waverly wallpaper, like the kind all over the house in Home Alone) but needed updating but still did an awesome Christmas bit, but that's not it at all.  Like, in the least.  The following is a picture dump of the resort (and I swear I was being picky when I included the ones below... I kind of took a lot of pictures):

The Greenbriar's "hall of fame"; the pictures hanging on the wall are all VIPs who stayed at the hotel.  Also, that hall is not covered in wallpaper; those stripes are all perfectly painted.  And this was a long hallway.

A sampling of their many Christmas trees:

I took pictures of the three bathrooms I visited:

Gingerbread house

  

One of several huge collections of toys for the toy drive.

Gazebo in the casino

Minted hot chocolate (super yum)

Huge tree on the front lawn all lit up.

The Greenbriar, lit up at night.

After we shopped and walked and saw and basically had our fill of The Greenbriar, we headed east to Charlottesville where we stayed at what has to be the biggest DoubleTree in America.  Unfortunately for us, biggest does not mean the most sound-proof, and we were neighbors with the most annoying family IN THE WORLD.  If you have kids, DO NOT LET THEM YELL ENDLESSLY AT 7 A.M. ON A SUNDAY!!  For goodness sake, take them out of the room or just give them something to satiate their needs.  Anyway, we arrived just in time to see RGIII claim his Heisman.  L was walking on air for the rest of the night!  It made an already great weekend even better.  Thanks to our un-awesome neighbors, I was up bright and early at 7 a.m.  L can sleep through pretty much anything so he wasn't disturbed at first, but eventually I had to turn on the TV to try and drown out the noisy kid next door, so eventually he woke up, too.  The good thing is that we were able to get out the door and off to Monticello early, so we were on one of the first tours of the day. 

Back side of Monticello

L and Me in front of Monticello.

Mom asked me what I thought about Monticello... it was nice and I'm really glad we went because it was something I'd really wanted to do since I moved up here, but truth be told, I enjoyed Mount Vernon a lot more.  That may be due to the time of year when I went to MV (beautiful spring day).  I don't know.  Definitely go if you're in Charlottesville because it's definitely cool, but don't expect the most amazing thing ever.

Also, there will be no Christmas card for me and L this year.  I tried countless times throughout our road trip to take a good pic and the one above is as good as it got, and you can't even really tell it's us.  We look like the fluffiest people EVER in all the ones we took at The Greenbriar, and in the other "good" one at Monticello that's closer-up, L's eyes are closed.  I planned to try and take some at my work holiday party, but no dice.  Hopefully we'll do better next year.