East Coast Vacation 2012: Virginia Beach

To continue on with my East Coast Vacation flashback posts, today I'm sharing our experience in Virginia Beach. Trent and I spent two nights in Virginia Beach, after just having been to Washington, D.C. the day before. That had been a beautiful, surreal day in a wonderful city, but we were excited about seeing a beach, the ocean, and more importantly, the Dave Matthews Band concert in Virginia Beach (woot!).

We made a small side trip to the Arlington National Cemetery in the morning, and then drove to Virginia Beach that day. Our hotel was super nice, with a balcony overlooking the boardwalk, the beach, and the ocean. Here was the lovely Boardwalk view:

Trent spent a lot of time out here on our balcony watching the ocean waves, and he even got up in the mornings and watched the sunrise. I'm a little less of a morning person to do that.

The first night in VA Beach was the Dave concert. It's no secret we go to their concerts every year, so how could we pass this one up?

We were front row in the lawn / fan club area. And of course Dave was amazing as always.

Just looking at this pictures gets me excited for seeing them again in a couple of weeks! May 16 in Houston this year...can't wait!

Below is a picture of the Virginia Beach boardwalk at night from our hotel balcony. It was so peaceful at night by the ocean, listening to the sound of waves crashing. It was a little chilly at night, but for the most part, we had perfect weather the week of our trip, which was awesome.



Here's one of those Virginia Beach sunrises that Trent woke up early to see and take photos of:



We spent the next morning on the beach right outside our hotel. It was nice, because we could just walk right out there, and there it was. The beach, the ocean, and relaxation..It doesn't get much better than that!



I don't think I spent much time in the ocean - Trent swam in the ocean everywhere we went, but I think I just dipped my feet in here. I mostly enjoyed laying out on my towel with my feet in the sand. :)

One of my favorite things about Virginia Beach was that everything was right there, on the beach. There were so many cute beachy restaurants right next to our hotel, like where we had lunch - Chix Sea Grill and Bar. We stayed at the Ramada, and this was just a short walk away. We ate outside on the patio.

That evening we walked along the boardwalk, went to a few gift shops, and explored. It got a little overcast that afternoon and sprinkled a little bit, but it wasn't too bad. I liked how laid back Virginia Beach was. It was a perfect city to just spend a couple of days by the beach.





Of course we had to stop and take a few photos along the way, like when we stumbled upon these pretty cool fish sculptures...



And this King Nepture statue was definitely the highlight of the boardwalk:

We had both gotten a lot of sun that day, and I remember my legs were SO sunburnt! We walked into a Walgreens store and I got some Aloe to put on them. I was applying that the rest of the vacation!

We ended our last night there by eating at Waterman's Surfside Grille. Trent got their "famous" Orange Crush, and I got a Tequila sunrise. Oh yeah, and we had food, too. :)

It was the nice little couple of days of relaxation that we needed after all that walking in D.C.! Here's a picture of the last sunrise of our days in Virginia Beach. Taken early in the morning when they scrape the sand to get ready for another beach day -



After Virginia Beach, we headed to North Carolina, specifically the Outer Banks, which will be covered in my next vacation post! If you haven't seen enough of the beautiful Atlantic ocean, you're about to see plenty more in my next couple of posts....