May 25, Day 334 – In Norfolk

We woke up fairly early this morning and decided to go for a walk. It was chilly and a bit foggy as we made our way into the center of town. We walked by City Hall, the Norfolk Federal Building and a Federal Courthouse, normally places that would be full of people, but the streets were still empty as it was only 7:00. We walked passed a big mall (Nordstrom and Dillard’s) and a big market area before heading back to the waterfront. We stopped at the D’egg diner for breakfast.

Back at the boat Linda worked on the blog and Gerry did some work (consulting stuff). We had plans to attack the forward cabin. We need a place for Derrick and Andrew to sleep when they arrive tomorrow. As we have not had guests for a while, that area has become the catching place for anything we don’t know what to do with. Now we need to find someplace else for it.

We went to pick up the rental car and ended up going to the airport (to make sure we weren’t faced with any surprises tomorrow night when we pick up the kids), had lunch, shopped a bit and Gerry got a haircut. We ended up being out and about for most of the day – so no cleanup of the forward cabin. We have most of the day tomorrow to get it straightened out, and we’ll work better under pressure.

We had dinner on board, watched a little TV, caught up on cruising logs/blogs and then off to bed.

On our walk this morning we came across many more mermaids. This one was in front of City Hall. Mermaids became the signature symbol of Norfolk in 1999 and you'll find dozens of these colorful mermaids all over downtown. There are a couple more below.

We took a walk through Town Point Park

There was an Armed Forces Memorial. Letters written home by service members who had died had been recreated in bronze and scattered across the memorial. It was very moving. You can double click this and the letters below to enlarge so you can read them.

This letter is from 1776 - Revolutionary War period

A letter from the Civil War period in 1861

... and one from 1942 during World War II

This is a placard on the waterfront describing the Intracoastal Waterway and pointing out into the Elizabeth River at Mile Marker Zero which is the official beginning of the waterway. You can't really see the marker in this picture, but it's out there.

A shot of sunset at the marina