New York City to Virginia

I had to set my alarm to get up before 8:00 am to move my car.  This time it was because a movie shoot would be closing 7th Street from 8:00 am to midnight.  It took me about 20 minutes to find another parking place, 4 blocks away, and it was posted for street cleaning from 11:00 - 12:30.  This meant that Rainy and I would need to be packed up and ready to leave by 11 am.  It was already hot out and I worked up a sweat in the car moving process.  Back at the apartment, Rainy and Raven were asleep in the one air conditioned room, I let them sleep until I felt it was time to get up and get going.  I walked back to get the car, clean out the ice chest, and throw away trash before driving back to 7th street and double parking next to the bright orange traffic cones that had been set up to prevent cars from parking.  We loaded up our suitcases, grabbed some cupcakes from Butter Lane, hugged Raven good-bye, and set off for Virginia.

We decided to travel the interstates, which meant traveling the tioll roads as we needed to ge to Fredericksburg by early evening.  What we don't like about freeway traveling is we don't get a real sense of the sountry we are traveling through, not like you do on a 2-lane highway.  The advantage is that you get there much more quickly!  We left New York and traveled through New Jersey.  On one of the toll roads, I managed to loose my toll ticket.  How can you loose the ticket when you never get out of the car?  We paid the full toll and then found the ticket at my feet.  Figures.  Next we passed into Maryland.  About 30 miles outside of Baltimore, we decided that we should stop for a late lunch.  We found Bertha's, a place on the water that served seafood with a focus on mussels; perfect.  They offered mussels cooked in a variety of sauces.  For an appetizer, we ordered the crad soup, a tomatoe based vegetable soup with bits of crab meat.  Rainy and I decided to share the mussels steamed in white wine with garlic and onions.  We also ordered the lump crabcake dinner served with coleslaw.  The food was wonderfully fresh and delicious!

Back on the road, we drove on into Fredericksburg arriving at our bed and breakfast, On Keegan Pond, before 7:30 pm.  We got settled into our room, and called Rainy's uncle, Jerry Lawson, to make arrangements to see her grandmother in the morning.

We decided that we were a bit hungry.  The Inn keeper recommended Bridges Brick Oven Pizza which served a lighter fare of Italian food. We shared one of the best antipasto salads that I have ever had.  The ingredients were all fresh, served separated, nit tossed, with the dressing on the side.  We also shared the Vodka Pizza which was made with vodka sauce, procsiutto, fried eggplant and mozzarella cheese.  It was good, but too much food so we took the remaining pizza back with us for a midnight snack.  I was ready for bed by this time, so Rainy dropped me off and and went to see the newest Twilight movie playing at the theater.  Our room was a bit on the warm side which made it hard to sleep, but we managed.