Originally Posted by
upndsky
For something completely different...
Are we out of the hotel in Williamsburg?
Check out ATLM88B rotation 9399 on 9/1/11. I did a Google search and there is such a hotel in Hampton. It's still a bit of drive from the airport, but there seems to be stuff to do (and eat and drink) around there.
If this is indeed a new hotel, I hope it's permanent and not some temporary deal because of the holiday weekend.
Your post might be erased because it mentions the hotel crews stay at.
But Hampton is, I guess a step up. It's the town where I grew up. The traffic on I64 back and forth to PHF will be awful at times. And I mean awful.
#1 rule. Don't go far. Don't go east of 64, if you do, you're in my old hood and I mean hood.
#2 rule. Ask them to take you to Mercury Blvd area but it's not close but if you have a long overnight may be worth the nagging but I don't think we do 32 hour layovers much anymore there. I'd say it's about like staying at the old DAY but safer and you may find a local restaurant that may be good or may not be good (think restaurant impossible episode) but it's possible there is something good. But not a whole lot of life down there because life is at mercury blvd and the better life is still across from phf. But this is better than williamsburg. If you jog, go south only, don't go east, north or further west than necessary to run south. There is a bridge that will take you south.
The Museum is not free btw but they make it nice. There is a Valujet DC9 in there, never thought to see if it was DAL. Blackbeard's head was put on a poll on that same inlet, it was a popular pirate hang out 300 years ago. They've tried to make it nice over the years but it's kind of fallen flat because you don't think of downtown Hampton as a destination place. The view will be nice, I don't mean women, the actual view. Hampton University is across the way, they have a pretty campus.
On a cold day you can smell the crab factory. You'll want to puke. Not sure if its the crab factory or not, never been able to buy crabs there to save my life. But when I used to ride the bus to school we'd point fingers at "who done it!" But nobody can pull that smell off.
It's too bad Ft. Monroe isn't commercialized, it's actually got one heck of a piece of property and the moat there I think is the only active Army base with one.
You know one place that might be a neat "downtown" hotel but I'm not sure if the hotel has rooms that open to the inside or outside. But Yorktown. Awesome place to get exercise, the hotel is next to the york river (the bridge you see northwest of PHF). It's got some food, not bad, very local. Kind of neat. Hampton's probably better. I'm all for dropping the downtown requirement for hotels except for cities we decide we want to be downtown at.