February 1, 2012
Christmas In An Old Town
Many people say it about places up and down the East Coast, but today all of you got to believe that it’s true. George Washington really did sleep here –a lot—and dine and dance here, maybe plays a little whist or billiards. This, after all, was his hometown –a busy port on the banks of the Potomac about eight miles upriver from his Mount Vernon. Not only that, but Mr. Washington even had a modest town house over on Cameron Street—a kind of colonial version of a pied-a-terre.
Back in his day Alexandria, Virginia, was a newly minted place, teeming with tobacco largesse from surrounding plantations. Shrewd Scottish entrepreneurs and tobacco agents had spotted its boomtown potential early on and settled in, bustling ambitiously along its unpaved streets; rowdies collected in its taverns; and chickens pecked about behind the scattered town houses. All the mentioned above was going on decades before Washington, D.C. –the great white marble monument of a city that now rises a few miles up the Potomac— was even a twinkle in an aspiring Federalist’s eye.
Northern Virginia’s Old Town Alexandria is hardly an unpaved village anymore, and no chickens cluck from behind the walled back gardens of its historic, expensive town houses. Its quaint, shady streets run arrow straight in the same grid they have for some 200 years, past some of the same houses. The town’s brick walkways are fronted by well-preserved colonial cottages, some only wide enough to accomodate one window and a door; and high-toned Georgians, their fanlights and brass door knockers glinting in the sun and their historic house plaques announcing their pedigree.
Should you prefer a classy colonialism chased by a strong shot of the Scottish flair, should you prefer a celebration of Christmas filled with real greenery and wassail-wish-you-well cheer, should you be able to appreciate a sturdy pair of legs marching beneath a kilt and you long to fall in line whenever you hear the lament of a bagpipe, may be the Old Town Alexandria is just your cup of tea.
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Filed under Whale Watching Tours by jenny