Virginia Oceanfront Hotels|"The Pride of Virginia: Tourism and Its Well-loved Hotels"

Source            :   http://shenandoah.org/
Category        :   Virginia Oceanfront Hotels
By                :    David H. Urmann
Posted By     :    Hotels in Virginia Beach North Courtyard

Virginia Oceanfront Hotels

Virginia is a famous state for tourists because of its natural setting and various seasonal activities. Aside from several natural wonders, it showcases amusement parks and historic sites. When considering a vacation in this region, it has several hotels you and your family will love.

Virginia was referred to Queen Elizabeth I simply because she was regarded as the Virgin Queen. Virginia is an American State situated along the Atlantic Ocean of Southern U.S. it is also called the Old Diamond and sometimes the Mother of Presidents because it is noted as the birthplace of 8 United States presidents.

The capital of Virginia is Richmond. Virginia is shaped by the Chesapeake Bay and the Blue Ridge Mountains. It is home to the state's fauna and flora. Most of its rivers flow through the Chesapeake Bay including York, James, the Rappahannock and the Potomac. Geologically and geographically, the state is separated into some regions from east to the west by the Cumberland Plateau, Ridge and Valley, Blue Ridge Mountains, Tidewater and Piedmont.

The country has an economy that has numerous sectors such as the military bases in Hampton Roads, agricultural production and federal agencies like The Pentagon in the Northern Virginia. The historic Triangle includes the famous custom tourism destinations of the living music of the Colonial Williamsburg, Yorktown and Jamestown.

Virginia has numerous National Park Service Units like the Shenandoah National Park. It is established in the late 1935 and encompasses the Skyline Drive. Approximately 40 percent of the national parks area is protected as part of the NWPS or National Preservation System and designated as the Wilderness. About 30 trails and parks such as Prince William Forrest Park and Great Falls Park are coped in the NPS or National Park System.

Virginia celebrates several festivals such as the Virginia State Festival, Neptune Festival, Norfolk's Harborfest and the Virginia Lake Festival. The Virginia State Fair is celebrated every September at the Richmond International Raceway. Norfolk's Harborfest is celebrated in June that features air shows and boat racings. The Virginia Lake Festival is celebrated during the third weekend of July at Clarksville. There are also two significant film festivals in Virginia such as the VCU Film Festival and the Virginia Film Festival celebrated at Richmond and Charlottesville respectively.

Virginia is also home to several hotels and one of which is the Hilton Virginia Beach Oceanfront Hotel. This hotel is situated about 20 minutes away from downtown Norfolk and the Norfolk International Airport. It is also 45 minutes away from Busch Gardens and Colonial Williamsburg. It is 5 minutes away from the Virginia Aquarium and Marine Science.

It is only 10 seconds away from the popular Virginia Beach boardwalk and oceanfront. The hotel features a full service concierge desk, a variety of outdoor and indoor dining as well as courtesy shuttle services to some famous beach destinations. The hotel's guestrooms have a 32 inch flat screen television with premium cable channels, high speed Internet access, two telephones with voice mail, a coffee maker, hairdryer and iron with ironing boards.

Quality Inn Virginia is situated about a mile from the center of town and about 20 miles away from the Norfolk International Airport. Some of the local attractions such as the boardwalk and the Virginia Maritime Science Museum are only 1 mile away from the hotel.

The hotel features beach access, fax machine, interior corridor, seasonal outdoor swimming pool, indoor swimming pool, bicycle rentals and large vehicle parking areas. All guestrooms have refrigerators, iron with ironing boards, telephones, cable televisions, wireless Internet access, daily maid services, a balcony terrace and coffee maker.

The Sheraton Oceanfront Hotel is 15 blocks away from the fishing pier, 1 mile away from the lighthouse and about 20 miles away from the Norfolk International Airport. It is a mile away from the Virginia Beach Convention Center, 4 miles away from the Seashore State Park and 11 miles away fro the Verizon Virginia Beach Amphitheater.

This hotel features direct beach access, fitness center, room service, indoor pool and outdoor ocean view swimming pool and hot tub. All guestrooms have refrigerator, iron, telephone as well as cable television, microwave, coffee maker, balcony terrace, and broadband Internet access.

Virginia Oceanfront Hotels|"Va. Hotel Viewed As Stately, Segregation Symbol"

Source          :  http://hotel.firstorfast.com
Category      :  Virginia Oceanfront Hotels
By                :  WILLARD KILLOUGH III
Posted By    :  Hotels in Virginia Beach North Courtyard

Virginia Oceanfront Hotels

The red-brick building set above Atlantic Avenue has looked out over the Oceanfront for 86 years, a constant through decades of history and change. Yet viewed through a different prism, The Cavalier on the Hill hotel can represent different things to different people.Tina Warren was 9 years old when The Cavalier drew her and her family to the area in the early 1950s, when her father took a job as first cook. She still has the letter, dated Sept. 23, 1958, announcing his promotion. Bertram Anderson served as the hotel’s first black head chef, a position he held until his death in 1970.To Warren, the hotel was stately, beautiful.Other views came to light earlier this month when the City Council awarded $18 million to help developer Bruce Thompson renovate the hotel as part of a larger development project. Andrew Jackson, chairman of the city’s African American Leadership Forum, spoke before the council, saying The Cavalier “represents a time many would rather forget than remember.”

“History is not the same to everyone,” Jackson said.While some such as Warren viewed The Cavalier with family pride, others said they view the hotel as a symbol of the segregated South, a place where black men and women were allowed to work but couldn’t stay as guests.“When you say preserve that history, preserve it for who?” said E. George Minns, president of the Seatack Community Civic League.The New Journal and Guide, a newspaper that has long served the black community, penned articles from the 1930s through 1960s describing hotel workers here.In 1938, the paper reported, the Virginia Beach Town Council passed an ordinance requiring all high school and college students coming to the beach for seasonal work be photographed, fingerprinted and registered with police in an attempt to cut down on crime. About 95 percent of those working in hotel and domestic services were black, according to the article.

At The Cavalier, picketers appeared in the summer of 1958, and members of the Local 23 Hotel, Restaurant and Bartenders Union went on strike, seeking higher wages.The Oceanfront was reserved for whites only, and black residents were allowed on segregated beaches on the Chesapeake Bay named Seaview and Ocean Breeze, historian Edna Hawkins-Hendrix said.“I was 14 before I could put my foot in God’s ocean solely because I was born black,” Minns said.Virginia Beach resident Ralph Parham II said his father grew up in Hampton Roads, graduating from high school here in the late 1950s. The Cavalier was the first thing his father and his friends saw when they rounded the corner, coming from Seaview Beach toward the Oceanfront, Parham said. When they saw The Cavalier, he said, they knew they couldn’t go farther.“They say, ‘It’s history,’ ” Parham said. “Yeah, it’s history of oppression.”To Tina Warren, The Cavalier holds positive memories.Her father’s job as head chef allowed the family to build a house and put down roots.Bertram Anderson was dedicated to his profession, and Warren can remember him waking at 4 a.m. or 5 a.m. at times to get to work to prepare for parties.Some days, Anderson invited his wife and daughter to come to the hotel early, before his shift was over. Warren and her mom would enter through the back and go into his office, which housed his desk and cookbooks and had large windows looking out to the kitchen, Warren remembered. There, they would eat together.“We would eat the same food in his office, and yet we couldn’t eat in the dining room,” Warren said.But those meals were special to her, she said.“It didn’t bother me then,” she said. “It was something that was accepted then.”When Warren’s family would write to relatives in Florida, they sent postcards with images of The Cavalier.“I look at it like the Cape Henry Lighthouse,” she said. “It’s just as much of a historical marker as that.”Carlos Wilson, known throughout the city as Mr. Virginia Beach and Mr. Cavalier, worked for the hotel for 73 years, from 1938 until his death in 2011, just short of his 90th birthday.

Wilson loved his work and considered those he worked with to be close friends, his daughter, Margie Wilson Coefield, said. Working at the hotel allowed him to provide for his family, she said.In later years, when she would take her dad to work, Wilson Coefield can remember watching him pause every morning, just to admire the building.When he died, friends from the hotel held their own ceremony and sprinkled dirt from The Cavalier on top of his coffin, she said.“They showed him respect, and he respected them,” Wilson Coefield said.In light of The Cavalier project, Carl Wright, president of the NAACP’s Virginia Beach branch, said he would like city leaders to take a serious look at giving opportunities to minorities, “particularly African Americans who have been overlooked for so long.”The past can’t be modified, he said, “but we can change things going on today by making sure everyone gets their fair share and fair opportunity.”

Councilwoman Amelia Ross-Hammond said she spoke with Thompson about opportunities for minority businesses within his Cavalier project and said it’s something she’ll be “keeping my eyes on.”“We cannot go backwards,” she said. “At least now we can try to be more inclusive.”Thompson said diversity is a “key component” of his company’s policies toward developing properties and businesses and said he was moved by Jackson’s comments at the City Council.“I have every intent of finding space within the hotel to both recognize those persons who have worked at the hotel and the community the hotel displaced when it was originally built,” he said. “I recognize the history of that hotel is not the same for everyone.”When Tina Warren sees the hotel today, she can imagine her dad there, dressed in his chef’s jacket and hat. She wants to see the hotel restored and said she believes her dad would have wanted the same.In 1987, Warren attended a Princess Anne County Training School reunion, held at The Cavalier. It was the first time she used the hotel’s front door as a guest.

Virginia Oceanfront Hotels| "Virginia Beach"

Source       :  spellboundcopy.com
Category   :  Virginia Oceanfront Hotels
By              :  spellbound
Posted By  :  Hotels in Virginia Beach North Courtyard

Virginia Beach is a beautiful beach that encompasses a large area between the Chesapeake Bay to the North Carolina line. In fact, the Chesapeake Bay Bridge tunnel that connects the Virginia’s Eastern shore with the mainland near Norfolk is a great tourist attraction too. It is a 17.6-mile tunnel that connects three beaches.

There is a wide variety of lodging choices and you wouldn’t have a hard time searching for cheap hotels in Virginia Beach. The resort area boasts a line of big hotels, restaurants, and souvenir shops. There are many great condos, and vacation rental properties. If you are more into nature, there are great camping choices with some campgrounds that offer camping right on the beach.
Aside from the beach, here are some attractions that you shouldn’t let pass:

Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge
This refuge includes more than three hundred species of birds. Each spring a variety of migrating shorebirds and songbirds take refuge at this Bay. A large flock of waterfowl can be seen here during the winter months. Migrating snow geese, tundra swans and ducks reside around the coastline in this period. The refuge also features maritime forests, large sand dunes, ponds, ocean beach and large impoundments for waterfowl. You can access these habitats by bikes, marsh trails, a boardwalk overlook and the beach itself.

Boardwalk

A 3-mile pedestrian walk with restaurants, ferris wheel and live entertainment in the summer months.

Harbor Park

Come see The Tides, a Triple A affiliate team of the Baltimore Orioles, play a home game.

Museums

Many great museums to choose from: Virginia Aquarium and Marine Science Center, Atlantic Waterfowl Heritage Museum, Virginia Air and Space Museum and Old Coast Guard Station Museum just to name a few.

False Cape State Park

One of the last underdeveloped wilderness parks near the Atlantic. Vehicular traffic is not allowed. Gain access by foot, bike, local transporter, boat or tram. Camp right on the beach and explore some of the 4000 acres in the state park.

Virginia Beach is known and loved because of its marvelous beaches and pleasant weather. You can find various activities at the beach including jet skiing, parasailing, surfing and much more. Watching sea creatures in their natural habitat is an activity that is enjoyed by the whole family together.

Winter months are the best if you are planning to do whale watching in Virginia. Whales migrate through the Virginia Beach from the month of December to March. If you visit in the summer, you can watch a variety of dolphins including bottlenose dolphins that usually swim in groups. Dolphin spotting season starts from June and ends in early September.

Virginia Oceanfront Hotels | "Going Vegetarian in Tapas-Happy Barcelona"

Source      :   http://frugaltraveler.blogs.nytimes.com/
Category   :  Virginia Oceanfront Hotels
By             :  SETH KUGEL
Posted By  :  Hotels in Virginia Beach North Courtyard

Shortly after landing in Barcelona earlier this month, I met up for lunch with a friend of a friend, who asked what I wanted to eat. Not in town to write about food and not feeling particularly contrarian, I said what I’d guess many travelers to Spain would say: “Tapas.” He took me to Ciudad Condal, a spot on the Rambla de Catalunya long ago flooded by tourists but still good enough to attract locals ready to wade around them.

Vegetarian Item

Behind the long bar was a feast: trays loaded with Iberian ham and chorizo and octopus and razor clams. Normally, in this kind of situation my mouth would water and my desire to gorge would trump all other brain function, including empathy. But this time, for some reason (jet lag?), my mind turned to others. “What a nightmare this would be for my vegetarian friends,” I thought.

And so I spontaneously decided to spend my four days in town as a vegetarian. More problematically, a tapas-loving vegetarian in this pig-and-shellfish crazy city, is a bit like a rock fanatic who won’t listen to guitars.

For the purposes of my meat-defying efforts, I defined tapas broadly to include montaditos (mounted on bread), Basque pintxos (skewered with a toothpick) and platillos, another common item on Barcelona menus, which literally mean “small plates.” (That’s how we often translate tapas into English, anyway.) I also decided to add Argentine-style empanadas, which are sold across the city and would be a crime for vegetarians to ignore.

I can summarize the difficulty involved in this decision in the blank stare I got when I told the bartender at Cervecería Catalana that I didn’t eat meat or fish. I’d guess vegetarians know it well, and vegans better — something between “Well, then what are you doing here?” and “Are you even a human being?” I settled for a small plate of pasta that the bill categorized as “rice.”

Others, though, were more sympathetic, offering the obvious patatas bravas (potatoes with a spicy sauce, usually tomato-based and sometimes spiked with paprika and chilies), and tortillas (Spanish omelets, which for some reason I despise). Quite often I’d spot an otherwise gorgeous eggplant or cheese or sun-dried tomato creation, only to realize on closer inspection that it had been sullied by an artful ribbon of anchovy. At the Vermuteria del Tano, one of Barceona’s traditional (and newly chic) vermouth bars, a nice woman stared at the clams before her, then speared a tart pickle, an olive, a bit of red pepper and cocktail onions on a toothpick and handed it over. It wasn’t good, but I was actually there for the house vermouth, which will remain vegetarian until a trendy entrepreneur decides to infuse it with bacon.

On to the highlights – and, luckily, there were quite a few. Another friend of a friend joined me at her favorite spot in the Gràcia neighborhood, an L-shaped bar called Gasterea, assuring me it was both reasonably priced and that there were plenty of vegetarian choices. I started in on the cold choices (1 euro, about $1.28, each), displayed pintxo-style on the counter: thin crispy eggplant slices with a scoop of creamy cheese pinned on with toothpicks, for example. But my favorites were the hot pintxos (1.90 euros) and cazuelitas, tapas-size “little pots” of goodies (2.65 euros): artichoke tempura with romesco sauce, the red pepper and nut-based sauce native to Catalonia. A small portion of mushroom risotto. Potatoes, presented not in bravas style but romescadas, like the artichokes. Seriously, how hard was that, I thought.

Soon I discovered the magic word for any vegetarian tapas-seeker in Barcelona: escalivada. It is the rare Catalonian specialty that somehow evolved without requiring meat: roasted eggplant and red pepper, usually with tomato and onion, frequently topped with a disk of heated goat cheese and often draped over toast. I ordered it everywhere I saw it, a total of five times, and though it was usually more expensive than other dishes (6 or 7 euros), it was also hearty enough to have a main-course feel. (Sometimes anchovies replace the cheese, so beware the word anchoas in Spanish or anxova in Catalán.)

But the best escalivada, I’d say by far, was at Sésamo — an actual vegetarian restaurant that I simply happened upon near Raval Rooms, the rather cramped and vaguely prisonlike (if well-located) pension. I stayed at it, in the Raval neighborhood, one night. (It was later recommended to me, making it especially satisfying to have “discovered” it myself.)

Compact and pricey (7 euros) but hearty enough to be half an entrée, Sésamo’s version had a pile of the three vegetables with two disks of caramelized goat cheese drizzled with rosemary oil and decorated with a balsamic reduction. (There was a seven-course tapas tasting menu for 25 euros, too rich for my blood but a good splurge for real vegetarians.)

The highlight of the escalivadas was usually the warm goat cheese, but the only noncheese escalivada I sampled was just as delicious, if less filling. It was at Nou Candanchú (6.50 euros), another Gràcia spot right on Plaça de la Vila de Gràcia, one of the charming squares that define the traditional-turned-hip neighborhood. This escalivada was long and low, eggplant and red pepper strips laid along tomato-rubbed toast and topped with scattered black olives.

One afternoon, I strolled the gauntlet of bars on Carrer de Blai, the main pedestrian drag of the Poble-Sec neighborhood where – travel-writing cliché alert – a taxi driver told me he brings his family for affordable tapas. (It’s also popular with travelers staying at nearby youth hostels.)

Most spots were the typical ham-and-fish-heavy fare. But a few had decent options, most notably the oddly named Blai Tonight, a cozy spot where I loaded a plate with self-serve 1-euro pintxos: bread topped with cream cheese and walnuts, a feta-stuffed piquillo pepper and a mushroom croquette. Finally, there was the especially hearty combination of a thick avocado slice and chopped-up tomato. Except that when I bit into the tomato, I realized it was salmon — my only slip-up of the trip.

Though my informal stroll turned out fine, I did conclude that vegetarians can’t really rely on the more formalized neighborhood rutas de tapas, or tapas crawls, that have become popular in the city, offering a cheap tapas-and-beer combination. Testing the new Sant Antoni route, I found slim pickings in the vegetable-only realm. One on the list, however, did stand out: Rekons, a bright, high-ceilinged “bistro” – really more of a cafe – that specializes in Argentine empanadas. (See, it’s not just me that classifies empanadas as tapas.)

Rekons is not so much vegetarian-friendly as vegetarian-BFF. The fillings of most of the 2-euro empanadas (and all the most interesting ones) are meat-free: asparagus with goat cheese; celery, Roquefort and walnuts; mushrooms with Emmental;  zucchini with almonds … need I go on? It’s a good deal at any time – two make a meal – but during tapas crawl hours (4 to 9 p.m. through May 31), you get a free Moritz beer with each empanada.

Perhaps the best creations I had, though, were from a spot I almost gave up on after scanning the meat-adoring menu (Iberian pork cheek, tuna in partridge sauce, foie gras with volcanic salt). I was about to walk out of the celebrated and minuscule tapas bar Quimet y Quimet, when my eye caught a cheese display on the bar that looked pilfered from a Michelin-starred restaurant.

So, though I feared yet one more humiliating moment, I decided to elbow my way through the early-evening crowd to the bar and declare for all to hear that I wanted something with no meat and no fish. And here’s what happened: The bartender took two round pieces of toast, topped the first with a wedge of Colston Bassett Stilton, diced pickles and red peppers; and on the other, a couple wedges of Brillat-Savarin triple-cream with mushrooms and onions, and drizzled both with a balsamic reduction.

I took out my camera, which is nothing new. What was new was the French guy next to me pulling out his camera too – and asking my permission to take a picture. Others looked on with what appeared to be envy. Suddenly, if fleetingly, I was no longer the pariah of the tapas bar but the hero.

I suppose the conclusion for readers is that there is hope for vegetarians in Barcelona, even without resorting to pizzerias, self-catering and a handful of vegetarian restaurants, if you choose your spots carefully.