REVIEW : Virginia City, Nevada

     Recently we had some family come into town for a visit, and while he was here we decided to check out Virginia City.  Now this was a first for me, as I had never seen Virginia City during the day, and actually, I'd only seen my friend's house.  Never any of the main drag, which is home to stores and stores galore.  It's very high up in altitude, and I think that might have been the reason I was yawning the first thirty minutes we were there.

     When we first arrived we went straight to a little restaurant called Palace Saloon & Restaurant.  It was a cute little place, and had doors attached to a store just next to it.  I can't tell you much about the food since I only ordered fries because my stomach just wasn't hungry.  I had been fighting anxiety since we had hit the hills and curvy roads, and since we dove straight into food, I wasn't ready.  I can tell you however that the fries were rather tasty and reminded me of Rally's fries.  So trust me, I was excited.  Everyone else I was with seemed to really enjoy their food and said it was delicious.  I know for the six of us, our food total was just under a hundred dollars, but not by much.

      From there we ended up wandering from store to store.  My fiance and I split off from the group so we could take our time and wander into places we knew no one else wanted to go into.  Honestly?  After we hit about five stores, I felt like we were wandering into the same places over and over.  There were a couple jewelry stores that we just didn't bother with.  There was four candy stores that I can remember, and split in half, each pair was pretty much the same, except prices.  Prices.  I can't even begin to tell you how expensive it was up there.  I wound up with a pound and a half of taffy, which I still call crap on, that cost me twenty-three dollars.  Ouch.

     The stores that were actually the most interesting were like thrift stores, full of really old and random things.  I scored five super old bottle caps for a dollar.  Don't know what I'm going to do with them, but I had to have them.  They had original metal lunch boxes, with the thermos still intact.  Old Barbie things from the nineties that me and my sister in law were just stupid over because we remembered having them as kids.  Pez dispensers as far as the eyes could see.  There were a couple stone stores that had random gemstones, crystals, and all sorts of quartz.  I did buy a couple stone marbles from there, just because they were really interesting.  Seriously though, you would go into one store, and four stores down, a different store would have exactly the same stuff.  The only original store that we went to there, was a store called fOREver Christmas, and was filled with hanging Christmas trees covered in all sorts of ornaments.  From dogs to birds, cats to musical instruments!  They even had a Halloween Christmas tree.  It was absolutely fantastic.  I also didn't escape without buying an ornament, of course.

     We ended up back on the end we started on, but unfortunately, everything starts shutting down about four in the afternoon, and we were well onto four o'clock.  So all the things we wanted to see in the beginning that we had walked passed to get to the place we ate were closed.  I wish I had taken more photos, but I was so busy looking at everything that I kept forgetting.  Also, once I had my camera in hand, we had ended up in a couple places that had signs up all over the store that said, "No pictures, if you see something you like, buy it!"  So that was kind of a bummer.  

     All in all, it was a fun little trip to go on!  Just be prepared, this place is strictly geared for tourism, and trust me, you pay for it.  If you have little ones, I'd suggest throwing a cooler in the trunk and packing lunches.  I know where we ate, the majority of the plates were over eight bucks a pop.  I'd also definitely consider packing your own drinks, despite the majority of businesses (even clothing stores) selling bottles of water and soda along the route.  Everything was expensive.  The least expensive thing I found was the bottle caps, and after that were my marbles, which were two bucks a piece.   They did provide entertainment, which if I remember correctly was free.  They had a shoot-out down at one end of town, which when not going, the characters walk the streets with everyone and stay in character and interact with everyone.  One of the guys walking along caught up with a kid who had a little gun on his hip and pulled it on him and the guy put his hands up and was telling the kid he didn't want any trouble.  Hopefully we'll go again and get to enjoy more of what they had to offer.  I still want to do one of those old time photos!

The view once you're passed the stores.

Really beautiful church.

Another view of the valley.