When I last left you in our 1 year wedding anniversary recaps, we had just finished touring Thomas Jefferson’s beautiful Monticello.
The next day we woke up at our beautiful bed and breakfast, the Dinsmore House Inn, right in the heart of Charlottesville.
We landed on this B&B because it had a cool historic tie to Monticello (you know we are suckers for history, right?). The man who helped to build Monticello also built this house.
Want to check out our digs?
We went with the Virginia Room, which came with this amazingly comfortable canopy bed.
The innkeepers also graciously decorate the B&B with fresh flowers, including this lovely arrangement found in our room.
When we woke up, we headed over to the main mansion for our breakfast in their dining room.
We were served a delicious spinach quiche, fruit, bacon, and a homemade scone. The scone was to die for.
After filling up on breakfast, we headed back over to the Monticello area to take a hike through Monticello’s picturesque property via the Saunders-Monticello Trail.
The 2 mile uphill hike starts at the bottom of Carter Mountain and slowly winds around the mountainside until you ascend to Monticello’s visitor’s center.
Since it was our actual anniversary, we spent our hike reminiscing about what we were doing at the same time last year. My usual response was getting ready and Mr. A’s was sleeping (must be nice to sleep in until 11 on your wedding day).
The trail was quiet and very well marked, most of it covered in a wooden walkway.
It was really nice to just walk hand in hand with my husband, hearing the birds chirping around us.
After about an hour of leisurely walking, we finally made it to the edge of Monticello’s property.
A few yards and a giant hill after that, we arrived at the visitor’s center. Since our visit the day before had been so jammed packed we didn’t have a chance to check out what the visitor’s center offered. So we decided to poke around and see what they had.
We visited the small museum and watched their 10 minute video (nothing special) and decided to head back to the trail so we could grab some grub.
We descended back down the trail in a notably quicker pace, gravity was in our favor and well probably our tummies too, and hopped into our car to head over to lunch.
Originally, Mr. A had scoped out Michie’s Tavern for lunch, an 18th century inn that has been restored to its golden days. After taking a peak at its menu (heavy, greasy tourist food), we decided to find something a little healthier and not quite as cheesy.
After a quick urbanspoon perusing, I found a crunchy looking coffee shop offering my favorite go to meal, hummus.
A 10 minute drive later, we arrived at C’ville Coffee (right across the street from Kath Eat’s bakery shop for you other blog dorks).
I devoured a delicious hummus sandwich, while Mr. A got his go to turkey.
When lunch was finished, we headed back to our room to fresh up for a wine tasting.
We hadn’t originally planned to tour a winery (we aren’t big wine fans) but hiking and lunch went by so quickly that we needed something else to do to eat up our time before our dinner reservations.
I hopped onto Trip Advisor to look for a cheap but quality wine tasting and found Blenheim Vineyards.
The vineyard was about a 20 minute scenic drive from our B&B, but half the fun was driving through the luscious farm country to get there.
When we arrived at Blenheim’s gates, I was a little nervous…would they notice that we know absolutely nothing about wine?
But when we walked inside the building, I was immediately relaxed by the surroundings. We were in a huge open farm style room with glass floors. We were approached by the nicest staff member who offered to do a $5 wine tasting.
We had a great time asking him questions and learning about his life. He actually grew up on a vineyard so he was a wealth of information for us first-timers. Eventually, we settled on a glass of wine and headed to their outdoor patio to enjoy it together.
We spent the next 2 hours staring out at the grapevine fields chatting about our wedding and the past year together. It was one of the most enjoyable parts of our entire vacation. There was literally nowhere else I would rather be than sitting on that porch with my husband.
But soon, we were getting close to our dinner time and I needed to get gussied up. Sadly, our time at Blenheim had come to an end.
If you are in the Charlottesville area, I definitely recommend trying out Blenheim. Their staff is incredibly informative and sweet (they almost forgot to charge us–that’s how laid back they are). You even get to keep your tasting glass as a souvenir. It’s also owned by Dave Matthews if you are into that sort of thing.
Make sure to tune in tomorrow where I talk about our anniversary dinner at The Ivy Inn as well as our anniversary gifts to one another (they are tear jerkers so you have been warned!).
Have you ever been to a wine tasting?
