Day 2: Monticello and the University of Virginia

Kelly and I agreed that we would start the day very early to beat the traffic around Washington. She set her alarm to five o’clock and I, still adjusting from European time, simply woke up at half past three and thanked my body for its obstinacy.

Since it took some time for Kelly’s coffee to kick in, I did the driving for much of the morning. Though we largely avoided DC rush-hour, I still found changing lanes in the darkness and growing chaos somewhat stressful. By the time the skies became blue, however, I felt confident enough to start driving with the music turned on: we were passing by a place called Vienna, so I used my driver’s prerogative to request waltzes and operetta classics (later on, once Kelly figured out how to navigate my USB, I would be able to introduce her to my carefully curated playlists of Armenian music, Zarzuelas, and American classical music – some of them more topical to our trip than others. She, in turn, shared with me her Broadway musicals, sea shanties, and country music).

We reached Monticello in Virginia well before our 10:15 tour of the building. That was quite fortunate, as my stomach started aching, and my mobility temporarily declined to that of an eighty-year-old. Since I had shared yesterday’s mussels with Kelly, I figured it was not food poisoning but my stomach trying to process meat after a long time of eating no shellfish. Almost as unpleasant as the pain was trying to smile and nod at the very well-meaning but talkative museum staff.

Monticello was built as a plantation and home by Thomas Jefferson, America’s third president. Inspired by the time he spent as a diplomat in France, he borrowed many of the house’s features from the old continent. The site was also home (and effectively prison) to 150 enslaved labourers, who tended to the gardens and house, and produced various goods. These included children, who served as nurses and tended to the tobacco plantation until they were ten years old. The boys would then go on to work at the nailery, while girls produced textiles. The contrast between Jefferson’s purported ideals and actual treatment of enslaved Africans and their descendants was, understandably, brought up by some of the information panels (to varying degrees of success) as well as our tour guide.

Our next stop was only a quarter of an hour away: we decided to have lunch in Charlottesville, where we visited the University of Virginia Campus. Jefferson believed the institution to be his magnus opus and persuaded his political colleagues and allies to support the project. Interestingly, he was very insistent on the university’s secularism. He elected to build a rotunda at its core rather than a church, and the university never named a professor of theology. He also wanted the university to provide what has come to be known as “liberal education.”

Being an idiot, I ate lunch very quickly and upset my stomach again. I was not as big of an idiot as one driver we saw at the traffic lights, though. The man kept inching forward until he shattered the glass of the car in front of him. It was the first traffic accident I had ever seen happen in real time.

It was in Virginia that the landscape finally started changing from the flat monotony of the Mid-Atlantic coast. Every now and then, the blue silhouettes of the Appalachians emerged from behind a forest. We would ascend the mountains that same evening as we drove towards Asheville. The climate there was cooler, and the air felt cleaner than before.

We ate dinner in Asheville with a Winterthur friend of Kelly’s, who brought her dog. After that, the three of us walked around the neighbourhood, allowing us to appreciate the laidback tempo of the town and the fresh evening breeze.

We drove 523 miles today, bringing our total up to 618.