Our first stop was to Monticello, which is of course Thomas Jefferson's home. We were only allowed to take pictures outside the house, so you'll have to just read my description of the inside.
The outside is pretty recognizable since its on the back of the Nickel, and was just as impressive as I had imagined.
The name Monticello is Italian for Little Mountain since It is placed at the top of a mountain overlooking Charlottesville and the future site (now current) of the University of Virginia.
When you Enter the house the first room is fairly creepy with various animal horns mounted on the walls, drawings on animal hides, mastadon jawbones etc. TJ saw it as a museum I guess. There was a very impressive library, and greenhouse. His bedroom was split in 2 parts, half had cool gadgets and the other half was more bedroom like. The next room for entertaining had lots of paintings, and then you walk into the surprisingly small dining room. The cool part about the dining room is that it was placed above the wine cellar, and TJ created a dumb waiter to hoist the bottles of wine up.
Our tour guide was a little biased and did not want to admit to any of the Jefferson and Sally Hemmings "rumors", and referred to the civil war, as the war between the states.
The next historic stop was to Ash Lawn which was James Monroe's house, however we didnt feel like paying the entrance fee, and just saw it from the outside.
The third historic stop we made was to Montpelier, which was James Madison's home. After James's death Dolly sold the house to the Dupont family who expanded the house and added a polo field, and eventually gave the house back to the historic society who are in the process of restoring the house to its Madisonion days. The restoration process was really cool to learn about. So far they have restored the outside by removing the stucco and scaling the house back down to the correct size. They are now working on the interrior and have almost no furniture, and most of the walls are yet to be painted or wall papered. The most interesting room had open walls showing how the restoration process works.
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