Adventures in Virginia - starting out

On Friday June 5th, at about 6:30pm, we set out on our drive down to Virginia Beach for our family vacation. The whole drive was clocked by Mapquest to be about 9 hours, and we decided to drive half-way Friday night, stay at a cheap hotel, and finish the rest of the drive on Saturday, arriving in Virginia somewhere around lunchtime. The whole idea behind this was that we could actually have part of Saturday as a vacation day, instead of just driving all day and getting there just in time to have dinner and go to bed.

Okay, so after picking up a Little Caeaser's $5 pizza for dinner in the car (gotta love those things), we had an uneventful drive down to Wilmington, Delaware, where Lou had reserved us a room at the local Motel 6. Now I've stayed in Motel 6's before - not a bad deal for $50 - not the Ritz, to be sure, but not a total dive.


Um, yeah, so apparently, Lou and I are not familiar with the cities of Delaware, and didn't know that Wilmington is pretty freakin' ghetto, with a ghetto Motel 6 to match. It was probably the skeeziest motel I have ever stayed in. It took us over 30 minutes to even check in, because the girl working the front desk "didn't know how" to check people in using the computer, which begs the question: "How can you work at the front desk of a hotel and not know these things?!" Then we get to the room. It was supposed to be a non-smoking room. Well, I guess at this Motel 6, the room becomes a non-smoking room by flipping the ashtrays over and putting a no-smoking sticker on the bottom of them. I kid you not. The room reeked of stale smoke, and there were no fewer than 3 ashtrays in the place, all flipped over with a "no smoking" sign sticker on the bottom. We had already switched rooms once (the first room they put us in had half-unmade beds and old food take-out containers all over the place - ewww), so we really didn't even want to bother trying again. At this point, it was 11:30 at night and the girls were exhausted and grumpy, so we decided to rough it. After Lou pulled back the covers in the girls' bed and discovered a cigarette burn hole in the top of the sheet, he decided that they should just sleep on top of the blankets and that we would use their blankies that we brought from home as covers. There were also several cigarette holes burned into the top of the television, curiously enough...

The two other treasures that we discovered at this hidden gem of a place were a chunk of broken glass on the floor that Lou said looked like part of a crackpipe (don't ask how he would know this - that's a story for another day...) and a beer bottle opener built right into the bathroom sink - now that's a classy joint for ya.

The pillows on the bed appeared to be filled with sawdust, they were so stiff, but I was so tired from the long day that I fell asleep anyway, only to be woken up at 6am the next morning by the cleaning staff in the room next door to us, chit-chatting in voices so loud they could have woken the dead. We all tried to ignore them for about an hour and a half before we gave up. Oh well, time to get moving anyhow, right? I got a shower (which was quite the interesting experience because the water consistently alternated from scalding to freezing without my even touching the dial), we packed the kids up and bid farewell to the Motel Sucks, er, um, I mean Six.


Yay, we made it!! On Saturday afternoon, we were in Virginia Beach. Our suite at the Ocean Key Resort looked like the Taj Mahal compared with where we had stayed the night before. But seriously, it really was a cute set-up. The hotel was recently renovated, and so our room was brand-new. There were two brand-new flat screen TV's in the suite, and even a DVD player to go with one. We got a one-bedroom suite with a kitchenette, so we wouldn't have to eat out all the time. The cute little galley kitchen was fully stocked with almost everything you need to cook, and even a dishwasher with dishwasher soap! What can I say, I'm easily impressed with some things. Our room had a king-size bed (score!) and a balcony with a view of the ocean (we were right across the street from it), which was a nice perk, too. The whole set-up was just so stinkin' cute - cheery yellow paint, a big tub in the bathroom, a pull-out sofa-bed, brand-new furniture all over the place - our girls were so excited to be in such a "fancy" hotel. ;)

It was Lou's birthday, so that night we had a little birthday party in our room. After dinner, he opened presents (we wrapped them all beforehand and brought them down with us) and had dessert, complete with the blowing out of the candles and the "happy birthday" song. I had made a strawberry rhubarb pie the day before (Lou's favorite), and we brought it down with us. The picture above is the fam in our room after we finished our celebration. It was really cute, because Lou said it was one of the best birthdays he had ever had.


After the "party", we went out exploring a bit before bed. The girls found these cute HUGE turtles at one of the beach entrances and just had to "ride" them.

Now, I try to be a law-abiding citizen, but I truly did not notice the "PLEASE DO NOT RIDE THE ARTWORK" sign on the ground in front of the turtles until after the girls got off of them - whoops.

Anyhow, so we arrived safe and sound, and were so psyched to be officially on vacation. Tomorrow, it was off to the beach...