No better way to start off your morning then with a British woman serving you breakfast! The only reason Jason and I would ever set an alarm on our vacation is so we can get breakfast from Juliette. Amazing! He and I quickly showered and dressed and headed down the large wooden stairwell to the living room/tea room for breakfast. I don't have pictures of the room, but I'll try my best to get one before we leave.
Jason and I found the tea table and began making ourselves some hot tea. I also popped my head into the kitchen and wished Juliette a good morning. She returned the gesture and then came out to show us where everything was for breakfast. She has an amazing tea room. She has coffee and a large assortment of different types of tea, along with sugar cubes, honey, and milk. She even has a hot water tap so you don't have to wait for boiling water, although she offered to make us a pot since she found out we love tea. We declined so she wouldn't have to wash any more dishes just for us. To the right of the room, above a very large window with small square panes made of dark wood, she showed us the buffet area. Here she had three different types of cereal (one was homemade granola), milk for the cereal, and a large bowl filled with fruit. Jason grabbed an apple and I ate the granola. Side note: granola was amazing. Juliette also offered us some fresh fruit juice. I declined but Jason took her up on the offer for pear juice. After we sat down for a few minutes Juliette walked out with two plates. Both filled with buttered toast, bread pudding, and sausage links. She also showed us where her homemade jams and jellies were. Jason tried both the strawberry jam and her wine jelly. The wine jelly was wonderful! She sells the jams and jellies too, so we might need to buy some for ourselves before we leave. Once we became unbelievably full, we headed back upstairs to relax and figure out the day.
It was raining today, which made things difficult to plan since we picked a place where walking was the best way to get around. Also, Jason and I were locked in a car all day yesterday so we weren't wanting to get around the town that way. We decided to relax and little and wait for the rain to stop. Around lunchtime the rain finally disappeared. We both were still pretty full from breakfast, so we decided to spend the time walking around the cemetery and town. The cemetery was unbelievably beautiful. We both love historical cemeteries. It's always the quietest spot in every town, the most peaceful, and it's a good reminder that no matter who you are there was someone once that remembered you and loved you enough to mark a spot in the world for you. It's also neat to read the different names of people and see how old they are. This particular one was called Thornrose Cemetery and there were people placed here from the 1800s.
Thornrose was absolutely breathtaking. The leaves were turning red and golden yellow and covering the ground like a blanket. There were long, winding paths that lead to a beautiful stone bridge with a small tower attached. It was just lovely. Here are some pictures:
Over 700 unknown confederate soldiers are buried in this mound, their names are unknown, just their ranks.
After savoring the cold weather and walking throughout the whole cemetery, Jason and I decided to head into town to browse antique shops. Apparently antique shops is what this town is known for. There are too many to count. We spend the afternoon going from store to store looking at old things, like a gold, travel razer kit; an old barber chair; a wooden spinning wheel; and an old, wooden wall mount telephone like the one my grandmother had. The first store we went to, however, told us they only take cash so we headed toward the nearest atm. We didn't make it right away though. Just a few feet from the antique store Jason had a heated battle with a bee. The bee landed on his head and Jason, thinking it was leaf, went to brush it out only to be stung on his thumb. We decided to head back to the B&B to get Advil and run it under cold water.
After a few minutes we headed back out to shop. We came across an awesome shop filled with pumpkins and fall decor in the window. My favorite thing in the window display, however, was the shop owner's cat. The cat was curled up by the pumpkins taking a nice nap in the sunshine. We already have two cats, so we didn't buy him (although I doubt he was really for sale). The only thing we did end up buying was this:
It's a little dusty, but once we clean it up it will be a great display case for our souvenirs. Jason and I always try to get dirt or shells or something from each vacation spot, usually from historical locations. This will be perfect to house each item. The antique shop we bought this in was really cute. The owner was a friendly bald man who watched a lot of news programs and alien tv shows. He also owned a very large, kind dog named tafty or tafada or something weird like that. There was also another man working there that greeted us when we came in. We heard "Hello" and responded in the same way. "Where are you two from?" We, of course, said Georgia and he then thanked us for driving so far to come shop at their store. We still don't exactly know what tipped him off that we weren't from Virginia. In fact, Jason and I have been rather surprised by the accents here. They don't seem to have any. Jason never really has had a southern accent and I have had to work hard not to sound southern (the occasional "say-ed" slips out, but never on purpose and rarely). We've thought we were blending in perfectly since we sound exactly like Virginians, but something must be tipping them off. This could also explain why everyone in town stairs at us so intently. Jason thinks it's because the town is so small that anyone new sticks out immediately. He's probably right.
After shopping we headed back to the hotel and decided to figure out where to eat. We decided on Mill Street Grill. As we walked downstairs to head toward Mill street, we heard Juliette's husband speaking to someone. We waved and then headed toward the back door to leave. Juliette's husband, however, excused himself from the new visitor and said he wanted to speak to us outside. Jason and I both had a moment of panic. What on earth could we have done to have him want to speak to us and why did he insist on speaking to us in private? My first thought was they were going to tell us they doubled charged us and our credit card would be overdrawn. Or what if they accidentally had served us breakfast with poison in it (I might have let myself get carried away with potentially horrible things, but it could happen...). Or maybe they doubled booked our room and were going to tell us we had to leave. In either of these cases, both Jason and I knew we were thinking the same thing... something bad is about to happen. He closed the door behind him and actually apologized to us. He said they had left the cottage earlier in the day to run errands and had completely forgotten to clean our room and give us new towels! Haha... no poison! We told him it was okay and that we didn't mind. He asked if we would be gone for a while so they could clean up now. We told them we were headed to dinner and he promised they'd clean up. Crisis averted. This is what the Mill Street Grill looked like:
The stained glass windows in the back were beautiful. Each one was part of the bread-making process. The first starting with a farm and the last ending with the bread being served. Jason ordered the fish and chips and I got a veggie plate. Both came with amazing bread with maple butter and a small scoop of peppermint ice cream. Delicious! After dinner we walked back to the Inn, but before we reached it we ran into Hugh Laurie. No joke, even got a picture:
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