I’m in Norfolk, VA, for a couple of days for work. This is the second trip i’ve Taken here, and we’re staying at a different hotel than when we were in April. So of course I was automatically comparing when I walked into the hotel. And at first, it seemed like the other hotel was definitely better. We had to pay for parking here. My room is smaller, and the bed isn’t quite as comfortable as the last one. After tonight though, there really only is one thing that matters: location, location, location! The first hotel was over by the airport, and it was surrounded by highways. I remember going out and trying go running outside, and I ran out of sidewalk almost immediately. We also had to drive a ways to find any kind of restaurant where we wanted to eat. So the hotel was nice, but we basically had to stay at the hotel.
Our current hotel is downtown, right on the Elizabeth river. And the difference is astounding! Tonight for dinner we headed out into the downtown area and found this really cool bar/pub that was designed with the theme of “steampunk”, which is a science fiction-type aesthetic based on the steam power of the 19th century.
Think of Jules Verne’s “20,000 leagues under the sea,” or H.G Wells “Time Machine”. For movies, I think of “The Prestige” as a steampunk-looking aesthetic. The restaurant even had a self-guided tour that you could take and that would point out the unique aspects of the bar.
It was very cool, with all sorts of glass accoutrements and gas masks all over the place.
Then, after dinner, I was able to leave the other guy on my team with whom I went to dinner and go walk the river a little bit. It was so peaceful and serene, but there was also so much to see! Right across the rivers are the repair docks where some Navy ships are currently being repaired. Even if the repair process for those ships wasn’t the focus of my current research project, they would still be incredibly hard to miss because they are MASSIVE.It’s really amazing to see the power of these ships and think about how much work goes into keeping them afloat and effective. It’s really fun to be working on something that has a real tangible aspect to it. Plus, I understand a little bit more about them, like what kinds of work is being done and I’ve met the heads of the companies doing that work, so I have a personal connection to the ships. For example, this ship has a massive hold in it because it’s an amphibious ship that holds different vehicles like tanks or hovercraft in that space. When those vehicles need to deploy, a door opens up and that space fills with water and those vehicles can drive out and be ready to go immediately. If you think about it though, all that water can cause a lot of problems with the ship and it needs to be repaired, which is what they’re doing here!
Then, as I was walking her down the river, I saw one of those informational signs titled “Battle of the ironclads.” This was a battle during the Civil War that is pretty famous, and it was right down the river from where I am! The Union sank one of their ships stationed in Virginia when the war broke out so the Confederacy couldn’t have it, but the Confederacy was able to repair the hull and cover it with steel that was powerful enough to protect the ship from cannonballs. Remember the ship at the beginning of the movie Sahara? That was an ironclad. This ship was originally named the USS Merrimack, but was renamed the CSS Virginia. Once it was completed, it sailed out of its port in Portsmouth, VA, and attacked the Union fleet blockading the Elizabeth river from the Chesapeake Bay. Those ships were wooden and didn’t really stand a chance. After terrorizing the Union fleet for a few days and destroying several ships, the Union’s response appeared: the USS Monitor. It was also an ironclad, but unlike the Virginia, which had a hull that was visible above the water, the Monitor looked like a submarine that had surfaced. It was super flat and had two guns in two towers. When it engaged the Virginia, neither ship did much damage, but the Monitor dissuaded the Virginia enough to return to port, where it was later burned by the Confederacy when they had to flee Union forces. The Monitor, on the other hand, sank when the deck was swamped, which didn’t take much because the deck was so flat. While the two ships weren’t effective against each other, they represented the first kinds of ships with hull armor that is now standard on Navy ships. While i’m not a huge fan of Civil War history, this is a unique piece of that history that I can certainly appreciate.
Our current hotel is downtown, right on the Elizabeth river. And the difference is astounding! Tonight for dinner we headed out into the downtown area and found this really cool bar/pub that was designed with the theme of “steampunk”, which is a science fiction-type aesthetic based on the steam power of the 19th century.
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| This is the bar. See all the gears? Classic steampunk. |
It was very cool, with all sorts of glass accoutrements and gas masks all over the place.
Then, after dinner, I was able to leave the other guy on my team with whom I went to dinner and go walk the river a little bit. It was so peaceful and serene, but there was also so much to see! Right across the rivers are the repair docks where some Navy ships are currently being repaired. Even if the repair process for those ships wasn’t the focus of my current research project, they would still be incredibly hard to miss because they are MASSIVE.It’s really amazing to see the power of these ships and think about how much work goes into keeping them afloat and effective. It’s really fun to be working on something that has a real tangible aspect to it. Plus, I understand a little bit more about them, like what kinds of work is being done and I’ve met the heads of the companies doing that work, so I have a personal connection to the ships. For example, this ship has a massive hold in it because it’s an amphibious ship that holds different vehicles like tanks or hovercraft in that space. When those vehicles need to deploy, a door opens up and that space fills with water and those vehicles can drive out and be ready to go immediately. If you think about it though, all that water can cause a lot of problems with the ship and it needs to be repaired, which is what they’re doing here!
Then, as I was walking her down the river, I saw one of those informational signs titled “Battle of the ironclads.” This was a battle during the Civil War that is pretty famous, and it was right down the river from where I am! The Union sank one of their ships stationed in Virginia when the war broke out so the Confederacy couldn’t have it, but the Confederacy was able to repair the hull and cover it with steel that was powerful enough to protect the ship from cannonballs. Remember the ship at the beginning of the movie Sahara? That was an ironclad. This ship was originally named the USS Merrimack, but was renamed the CSS Virginia. Once it was completed, it sailed out of its port in Portsmouth, VA, and attacked the Union fleet blockading the Elizabeth river from the Chesapeake Bay. Those ships were wooden and didn’t really stand a chance. After terrorizing the Union fleet for a few days and destroying several ships, the Union’s response appeared: the USS Monitor. It was also an ironclad, but unlike the Virginia, which had a hull that was visible above the water, the Monitor looked like a submarine that had surfaced. It was super flat and had two guns in two towers. When it engaged the Virginia, neither ship did much damage, but the Monitor dissuaded the Virginia enough to return to port, where it was later burned by the Confederacy when they had to flee Union forces. The Monitor, on the other hand, sank when the deck was swamped, which didn’t take much because the deck was so flat. While the two ships weren’t effective against each other, they represented the first kinds of ships with hull armor that is now standard on Navy ships. While i’m not a huge fan of Civil War history, this is a unique piece of that history that I can certainly appreciate.
It was a lot of fun to be able to get out and see a little bit of Norfolk beyond just highways, and I think the hotel has made all the difference. :-)
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