via Flickr user @jpaphotography
This post is definitely a bit long in coming, but trust me, it’s not an experience I’m going to forget anytime soon.
So, it was my wife’s birthday in mid-May, and I was trying to come up with a plan, because you know you need a plan for your wife’s birthday 
. I was trying to do something special, different and slightly spontaneous. It’s not that I was being last minute, it’s just that day-to-day, the overall desire changes, you know? There are days when all I want to do is curl up and lock myself away, and others when even I could imagine myself on the beach, getting that ever-so-elusive tan.
So in planning this trip and using all the online resources, like a good tech boy, I discovered a few good-to-know things in my overall experience, as well as a few tips for any readers and Googlers out there. Read on, and tell me what you think!
Yelp is your friend.
I’m behind the times, I know, but I really love Yelp. If I had more time, and honestly found myself out and about more, I would be all over the review scene, but for now I’m all over the reviews given by others. Yelp really seems to be an incredible network of hyper-foodies and people very plugged-in to their community. You’ve gotta love that!
Yelp turned me on to a few good places out and about in Virginia Beach. Our best discovery of the entire journey was the restaurant we found for a romantic dinner. It was sensational! The place was called the Terrapin Restaurant, and it came highly recommended by Yelpers throughout. Though I won’t dare to compete with a Yelp-style review of the joint, I will say it was remarkable in:
- Service (our server was personable, not overly invasive, and very honest about his preferences)
- Accomodating (we called about three hours before showing up)
- Considerate (they had a sweet half portion package for their ala carte menu. Four courses, half price, was totally more than we needed and completely decadent)
- Quiet (read on, but the weekend was filled with cacophony. The understated atmosphere had perfect tonal music for what we were expecting, and there were probably less than two dozen tables)
We essentially arrived at the tail end of the dining hour, but the staff was very respectful and considerate without rushing us. It’s probably safe to say that we were the youngest people in the place too, but I would absolutely recommend this place in a heartbeat.
Tip: As a backup to Yelp’s recommendation, I also looked the place up on TripAdvisor, another great travel resource.
But sometime’s Yelp! is not your friend.
So in searching for the perfect hotel, the Westin at Virginia beach came highly recommended on Yelp, and it definitely did not disappoint. Plush bed, cool shower, sweet TV, dog friendly, it was pretty awesome. Of course, if I had dove a little deeper into the details, I would’ve discovered a few key facts…
Google is your other friend.
Google would’ve helped me in a few key ways if I had just zoomed out of the whole planning to consider some overall gamebreakers for the weekend. I’m thinking mostly about helping me realize that:
The sweet, posh VA beach hotel was about ten miles from the actual beach, and though still quite nice, had us driving on the highway back about ten miles. Whoops.
There was a gigantic wine festival in town that same weekend that pretty much brought spring break, flashbacks of a Carnival cruise nightclub, and Carnivale to the entire town. These people were insane and this wine must’ve been good. Seemed…different, but unexpected for sure, and what we had planned as a quiet happy hour turned a bit sour after about the fifth 70+ dude that checked my wife out.
Another key point, is that it totally would’ve helped me realize that there was a senior prom happening in the hotel that very night. Not that I, and my barky dog don’t love teenagers running through the hall at night…
Call.
Hey, we all love the web and it’s an incredible resource. Unfortunately, all the info’s not there. For example, the super sweet bayside restaurant with the sunset view? Somehow they must not have a great webmaster to update the site to indicate that the place had been pretty much blown away in a Noreaster in November of 2009. Though it was kind of funny getting a happy holidays message.
Contemplate your pet.
I’m a pretty new pet owner still, though she’s totally my dog and no one else’s . So I definitely thought it was really cool that the hotel was pet friendly, we thought it would be super great that we could bring her along.
It wasn’t.
Really, it wasn’t.
monster...
Brownie is a great pup, and she did definitely enjoy the ocean. However, her overall still-young attitude and dependence on dog-dad and dog-mom made us totally regret our decision to take her. Oye. Although I did think it was pretty cool on the way there to submit a question to KGB about dogs being on the beach, I suppose I got caught up in all of it, and how could resist that face?
Next time, she’s staying somewhere else. The crying and whining and the not-wanting-to-get-kicked-out-of-the-Westin feeling meant that she went everywhere with us that weekend, among the wine-toting glitterati and other craziness.
Overall, it’s not to say that it was a bad trip by any means at all. We had a nice time overall, and we definitely learned a lot about our travel styles at the same time. Considering we’ll be hitting up a trip trip to Peru next year, I’m definitely putting these things into practice!
What would you do? What travel resources do you depend on? Are you the research-on-the-scene type, or the total planner?
