The riches of Richmond

I don’t want to leave Richmond. It has been a wonderful interlude here.

There is so much of interest in this town. We could do with a few more days. But, even on a six-month road trip, we have a schedule to follow.

I am in love with the Crowne Plaza Hotel. It upgraded us to the dreamiest suite on the tenth floor where not only have we had the luxury of spreading out in a way road trippers come to crave after a few months, but also it gives us a 180-degree view of the city. We’re at the pointy end of the hotel. The windows meet in a sharp V. We look across to the James River on one side, down to the old Tredegar Ironworks and

museum and even the great big Federal Reserve Bank. By night the view turns to lively walls of bright lights.

We see bridges and roads and also a city park which is undergoing renovations. We watch the work on the park site with fascination, using our binoculars to see the tree plantings etc. I am addicted to this project and am frustrated we will not see it completed. Similarly, on another side there is a building being demolished by one of those great big balls. Whamp! This also is fascinating to watch.

Coming down. Going up.

It’s the living theatre of a changing city.

We have slipped into a pattern of life in the Crowne, now friendly with many of the staff, loving the lilt of their southern accents. They are outgoing, interested, and interesting. They give us tips on favourite places to visit and tell us things we want to know about the area. The head doorman, a very tall, lean and imposing elderly African American man with a resonant actor’s voice and a powerful Virginian accent, fills us in on the changes in the state’s tobacco history. Virginia's tobacco farming had been his family background. Generations have worked on and loved the industry which had a particular rural rhythm and lifestyle.

But, as we have noted in our drives through the countryside, it has gone. His family has dispersed to other jobs. There are still a few tobacco farms around, he says. We may still see some in Tennessee or Kentucky. But no longer in Virginia, home of the sweetest and most famous tobacco of them all.

The Crowne breakfasts have been divine. Southern yummies - grits and gravy, that incomparable slim and crispy American bacon, biscuits (which are scones), and eggs cooked however you like them by a big, beaming African American chef. Moderation is a challenge. I swim and do my aqua guiltily in

the pool after these breakfasts before we have our adventure for the day.

On one hot day, we take a trolly tour of the city, a very comfortable way to get a big picture of a place with expert commentary. We score that in spades with Melissa as the guide and Rosco as the driver.

Melissa never seems to draw breath. She’s a torrent of knowledge. We see historic buildings and new.

We get fashionably angry with the famous medical school in witnessing its insensitivity in crowding out and spoiling the views of some of the city’s most precious heritage buildings.

We see murals, murals and more murals. Lavish street art covers acres of walls.

We see the elite mansions' district of the city; how the Richmond

zillionaires live. Gothic castles, no less.

We see Monument Avenue with its lofty stone dignitaries, including a statue of Arthur Ashe, a distant relative of Bruce’s it turns out.

We see Richmond’s canal, the famous Shockoe district and Carey Street, and Church Hill.

We are to become a bit familiar with

Carey Street. It is a cobblestone treasure of a street. It is there that we run into the colourful performance artist Elie Elis and her even more colourful poodles. She colours them purple to make people happy and so help world peace. As you do. She leaps into conversation while her garish poodles stand by, tails down, looking decidedly embarrassed.

Oh, she has great projects to save the world. Painted poodles is just one of them.

She proffers her card so that I may have the pleasure of exploring her art which, later, I do. Hmm.

It is in Carey Street where we eat fabulous

meals. Richmond is a foodie city.

First up we dine at Sam’s Grill where the crab soup is one of the most heavenly things we have ever tasted.

Then we try the famous old Tobacco House which is obviously where the swanky Richmonders go.

It is all polished wood with a 3-storey atrium around which the restaurant is set on handsome balconies.It has panelled private rooms. It has tobacco advertising mirrors on the ancient brick walls and a classic old lift taking elderly diners up and down. It has deeply respectful, formally dressed wait staff and to top it all off, the food is

gorgeous.

It is in Carey Street that we set out on our Trolley Tour and where, while waiting for the trolley, we meet a delicious African American woman called Jessie. She is watering verge plots and flower boxes when we fall into conversation. We have plopped down on a shady street bench to watch the world go by on this hot day. As a retired teacher, Jessie is

caretaker for a series of buildings three days a week. The owner, an old friend, offered her the job before she retired. Give me a few weeks to be retired before I start, she told him. Two days into retirement, I rang him up and said I will start yesterday, she laughs. I love to be busy.

She tells us about life in Shockoe Bottom, about the jazz festival, the hip hop festival, the restaurants, and the businesses. Such are the encounters which add depth to the travel experience and embed added warmth to a place. Here they underscore the reputation of The South for its friendliness and hospitality.

We venture far from the prettiness of Carey Street one night to dine at what is touted as

among the tippy top restaurants in Richmond - the Roosevelt in Church Hill. It’s an interesting area, named for St John’s Church, the oldest church in Richmond, in which Patrick Henry gave his famous “Give me Liberty or Give me Death” speech in 1775.

When we try to book we are told the only time slot is 5:15 PM which is a bit early for dinner but, well, this is special. We adjust our food

consumption for the day to be ready for an early meal. The restaurant is in a pretty weird, mixed suburb. Richmond is a city of extremes. One minute we are looking at absurdly sumptuous squillionaire mansions. The next we are in the midst of dilapidated houses crumbling with neglect, people hanging around on the streets, fiddling with broken cars… These streets are a bit scary. One does not hang around.

But gentrification rules these days and this restaurant is on the edge of such a suburb. There is a quality of quaint to the surrounding houses, downmarket but not destitute. Their house paint is ok. The inhabitants seem to be mainly white. The restaurant is an older corner shop. We arrive at five and the bar is hopping already. It’s fashionably rustic. We are seated at a narrow table for two and order drinks. I order one of the house special cocktails, the Jackaloupe which purports to be a cantaloupe and lavender concoction with applejack and bitters. It comes with a massive cube of ice. I can’t taste either cantaloupe or lavender. Just applejack and maybe soda. The mussels

steamed with ginger are divine, though. The glamorous scallops main is okay. But the piece de resistance is, and I’m now stuck in a zone of calorific remorse, a foie gras pound cake with berries and gelato. I had to try it. The very idea of a foie gras dessert tickled my curiosity. It seems they replace some of the butter in the pound cake with foie gras. Who on earth thought of that? Do you know, it was just gorgeous. Only the faintest hint of liver. But another sort of wicked richness. Why did I forget to photograph it?

There are lots of things to like about Richmond, apart from the food and history.

I never do get into its retail area. Bruce is a devoted anti-shopper and streets of interesting boutiques and gift stores are his idea of hell.

But we do go to the cemetery.

It is called the Hollywood Cemetery, not because of any association with movie stars but because of the holly tree and its wood.

It is a rhapsodically beautiful place.

Immense.

One must drive, curving around meandering roads which wind up and down hill slopes and along the bank of the James River. The trees are glorious: blooming crepe myrtles, huge old maples, oaks and elms.

Graves and crypts, flagpoles and memorials pepper the slopes as grey sculptural shapes.

They are very old, many of them. And departed figures of the American Civil War predominate along with the old gentry of Richmond.

Hollywood brags several US Presidents - James Monroe and John Tyler. And, to Bruce’s immense excitement, the great Confederate States’ President, Jefferson Davis. He was the South’s counterpart to

Abraham Lincoln. After the South lost the war. he was jailed for treason, even kept in shackles for a two years but in the end he was to be known as “the hero of the lost cause”.

There are myriad Confederate generals and notables buried here. Unnotables, too. And there are US congressmen, Pulitzer prize winners, judges, diplomats and governors.

And there is a little girl. A toddler.

No one is quite sure of her name. Maybe Bernadine Rees.

She was not yet three when she succumbed to disease, maybe scarlet fever, in 1862.

What everyone does know is that she has a guardian standing over her grave, a life-sized Newfoundland dog. He’s known as Iron Dog.

The story goes that Iron Dog’s owner put him there because the little girl so liked to pat him.

He is splendid.

He has a serene, eternal expression.

He guards the tiny grave whereon people pop small gifts, little toys and candies, and things a toddler may like. Touched by the spirit of it all, I leave a little koala.

Hollywood is one of the world’s magnificent cemeteries along with Paris’ Pere Lachaise and Savannah’s St. Bonaventure. It is a glorious park of ghostly grandeur and a pride of Richmond.

There are things we have not managed to do. So many museums. The Edgar Allen Poe House. He’s believed to be a distant relative of mine. I would have liked to pop in. We do not manage the art gallery either with its great collection of Faberge eggs. But that’s alright. I saw them last time.

We have done all we can fit in and it is time to move on.

And so, with mixed emotions we pack the Rogue once again and return to the open road and our next adventure.