Monticello & Charlottesville

During the freezing cold inauguration weekend we went to see our friends in Charlottesville, and visit Monticello. I learned a lot of interesting facts about Thomas Jefferson, and his house was really neat! It was amazing how ahead of the times he really was. Here are some of the things that we saw that we remembered in the house:

Entrance Room: Jefferson always had people coming to his house to visit with him. The main entrance area had a lot of really neat artifacts that were used to teach the people that came while they were waiting for him. The reason for this was because knowledge was the most important thing to him and he wanted everyone to be educated. Some of these include maps of Africa and Virginia, animal skeletons, Indian artifacts from the Lewis & Clark expeditions (I believe).

Parlor: The parlor has a lot of portraits and sculptures from all over. One portrait is of his nephew and it is hanging lower on the wall than the others. The reason for this was because he never finished his degree so he wasn't as highly looked upon by his uncle (even though after Jefferson died - this nephew was the one who brought the family out of debt).
Bedroom: Jefferson took a lot of influences from his travels all over the world into his home. He had alcove beds in most rooms which were pretty neat. He has one in his own bedroom but it opens from both sides. He actually died in his bed on the 4th of July which was interestingly enough because that was his favorite holiday. Thomas' favorite subject was science and he had a lot of neat things in his bedroom that he used including a microscope, telescope, and copy machine he made. I have no idea how he made it, but it had the pen that somehow would re-trace everything as you were writing/drawing with another pen.

They say that his house was different than others in the sense that he had skylights and more windows than your typical house. This was so he could use as much light as possible during the day to work. These windows were also double-paned to keep out the cold air. He also invented these automatic shutting double doors - when you closed one, the other would close also.

Library: One of my favorite parts was going into his library/book room. He had hundreds of books and he donated a lot to the Library of Congress. They even have some of his originals still there.

Dining Room: His guests said that the food he served was very unique because he loved food from all over the world and would eat it in his home. He invented a pivoting door that had shelves on it. His slaves would load the shelves with food and then pivot the door so the people could serve themselves. I guess the reason for this was so they wouldn't see the slaves. He also had a contraption that went from the dining room to the wine cellar. Jefferson would put an empty bottle on it and send it down so the people below would use the pulley's to send another bottle up.

Outside area: He had hundreds of trees and a huge vegetable garden! I wish we could have seen it in the Fall but we probably won't be here next fall which is a bummer. It was still really neat to see! We were even able to go to his grave-site and take pics. The gate surrounding it was pretty cool.

We also walked around UVA which is where Tyson's friend is going to Law School. In their book store they had a flask with UVA written on it...I thought that was pretty funny....perfect for law students. Darden Business School was pretty snooty, but they did have free hot chocolate which tasted really good! Ty got all huffy at me saying it was just for the students but then drank pretty much half of it...so then I didn't feel bad.