After spending almost two months in Maryland, Shae and I headed down to Virginia for Christmas.
We’d originally planned on being back in Virginia at that time as Shae’s dad was due to get remarried. They ended up postponing the wedding until 2021 due to COVID, but we decided to still spend Christmas there due to Shae’s family being in the area.
After Christmas we headed down to New Orleans for New Year’s Eve. As you might expect, it had a completely different vibe compared to how it was for Mardi Gras at the start of 2020, but it was disappointing to see how seriously (or, more accurately, how non-seriously) other visitors were taking COVID.
Here’s a quick recap of what we got up to over Christmas and New Year.
Virginia Beach, VA For Christmas
Where We Stayed
We’d booked two different stays for our two weeks in Virginia Beach. The first week was at the Candlewood Suites Virginia Beach Town Center which we’d stayed at earlier in 2020 (here’s my review).
We’d then booked a week-long stay at the La Quinta Virginia Beach. That was because it was by the beach, but it wasn’t quite as close to the beach as we thought (it wasn’t far, but it wasn’t on the oceanfront).
After checking in, we realized it was a mistake having moved from the Candlewood Suites. The La Quinta was incredibly noisy – so much so that we could hear people in their rooms further down the hall even when we were in our room with the door closed. The walls seemed paper-thin and the room was much more cramped than the hotel we’d just come from.
The thought of spending a week there over Christmas seemed like a miserable prospect, so we decided to leave after a couple of hours and returned to the Candlewood Suites, booking another stay there using points.
What We Did
A week before Christmas we met up with Shae’s dad and his fiancée to celebrate his birthday, then saw them again on Christmas Eve to exchange gifts.
Just before Christmas, Shae took a trip up to Williamsburg, VA with her mom. Williamsburg is home to Busch Gardens and every winter they deck out the amusement park with millions of lights for Christmas Town.
Christmas Town was run a little differently this year due to COVID; for example, there weren’t any shows as those were previously indoors. Some parts of the park were closed, but social distancing wasn’t a problem as the park was much emptier than in previous years.
The two of them returned on Christmas Eve, with her mom and stepdad getting an adjoining room at our hotel for a couple of nights over Christmas.
On Christmas Eve night, Shae left out whiskey and a sugar cookie for Santa and pineapple for his reindeer; I have it on good authority that they enjoyed their treats 😉
On Christmas morning we opened our stockings, then Shae and I had a Zoom call with my family in the UK. After that we continued opening our gifts, ate plenty of food and had a nice, relaxing day. Truffles thought that every gift being opened was for her and, often times, they were!
New Orleans, LA – New Year’s
Where We Stayed
It’s a long drive from Virginia Beach to New Orleans, so we stopped in Charlotte, NC and Montgomery, AL on the way down. We arrived in New Orleans on December 30 and stayed for three nights so that we wouldn’t have to check out on New Year’s Day.
We stayed at the Hyatt Centric French Quarter New Orleans which is where we’d stayed for Mardi Gras using three free night certificates – one from my Hyatt credit card, one earned from spending on that card and one earned based on the number of nights we stayed with Hyatt last year.
The hotel wasn’t as busy as it was for Mardi Gras, so we were able to get an upgrade to a suite with my status.
What We Did
Even though we decided to visit New Orleans for New Year’s, Shae and I didn’t have any intention of partying while there – we just wanted to visit again as we really enjoyed our time there earlier in 2020.
We avoided all crowds and didn’t spend any time on Bourbon St considering how busy it was. What was particularly disappointing was seeing how many people didn’t seem to be taking COVID at all seriously. Many people didn’t wear masks and bars and restaurants were fairly crowded, so we just went off and did our own thing. We had great weather there one day, but another day it was very rainy; that didn’t stop us from going out for a walk though.
We visited Pat O’Brien’s a couple of times for a Hurricane; they have a large courtyard, so we felt OK having our drinks there rather than taking them to go seeing as it was outdoors.
We liked getting alligator hot dogs from Dat Dog during our previous visit to New Orleans, so we got them again on this visit. This time we went for contactless delivery from DoorDash rather walking over there.
For dinner another night we decided to eat out at Royal House Oyster Bar. We’re still not comfortable eating at restaurants indoors, so we picked that restaurant as they had seating out on a balcony.
It was fun eating out on the balcony, although it was a little unnerving as the balcony was slanted. We therefore had to be careful not to let the gumbo spill when it arrived.
Shae and I had a low-key New Year’s Eve. We spent the evening in our hotel room playing on the Nintendo Switch I got for Christmas.
We turned the TV on at about 11:30pm CT to bring bring in the New Year and gladly leave 2020 behind.
Love the whiskey for Santa!!!!!😊
Love that you ventured out in the rain.
Love the family time.💕
Nice room at candlewood suites.
Thanks!
May I say I so respect that you are taking covid seriously and being careful. You are setting a good example for all. Thank you.
Thank you! I know we’re probably not taking it as seriously as some people would probably like seeing as we’re still traveling, but we’re trying to be as responsible as possible considering we don’t have a home.
Hi! We saw y’all driving in Austin this weekend and I had to visit your site. I love that y’all are living the nomad life! We’re transitioning to it as well, starting next month with San Antonio and working our way around the country slowly to visit cities on our bucket list (Memphis for ~March, Atlanta for ~April, Columbus for ~May, Chicago for ~June, etc). We’re working while traveling so doing long-term Airbnbs. I want to learn more about churning to be able to leverage CC and points for hotel stays on the road like y’all are doing. Subscribing to your blog to follow your journey – stay safe!
That’s awesome – congrats on being able to travel too! We loved all those cities, so I hope you enjoy them as much as we did.
On the churning side, be sure to check out Frequent Miler too as that should help – I write part-time on there, but Greg and Nick write the most posts and provide so much helpful information.