• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Lodging

There are several motels out on Route 29, as well as several bed & breakfast inns and an historic hotel downtown.

Fountain Hall Bed & Breakfast is in a Colonial Revival home renovated in 1985 as Culpeper’s first bed & breakfast. The land was originally owned by Virginia’s Royal Governor, Sir Alexander Spotswood. The inn has a sweeping walnut staircase and six guest rooms, some with private porches and whirlpool tubs. The first floor is handicapped-accessible. (609 S. East Street, tel. 540-825-8200 or 800-298-4748, www.fountainhall.com, $$)

Peter and Karen Stogbuchner, who own The Hazel River Inn restaurant in town, also operate an inn by the same name out on Eggborns­ville Road. The century-old home has three bedrooms with private baths. There’s a heated pool/spa (open May-October), a stream and great views. The hostess is a horticulturist, so the five acres of gardens are superb, as are the gourmet dinners prepared by the host/chef using herbs and produce grown on the grounds. (tel. 540-937-5854, www.ha­zelriver­inn.com, $$)

Pet-friendly: The Lord Culpeper Restaurant & Hotel has recently renovated 20 rooms including two suites, moderately priced, in the 1933 hotel that was known for lavish parties and quality food. The current owners believe the spirit of the original proprietor is in residence, along with his dog, Happy. Not surprisingly, they will accept small pets with a $5 charge. There’s a nightclub in the hotel, but they say the sound doesn’t carry up to the rooms. (401 S. Main Street, tel. 540-829-6445, www.lord­culpeper.8m.com, $)

Pet-friendly: It’s nine miles outside Culpeper, but worth the drive for a unique lodging experience at The Funny Farm Inn. Guests can bring their horses and well-behaved house pets (with prior notice) to the 85-acre horse farm. Three fully furnished homes with kitchens are available for lodging; two are 1800 log homes, renovated with all the modern amenities. (2437 Funny Farm Road, Reva, tel. 540-547-3481, www.bb­on­line.com/va/funny­farm, $$)

Information

Culpeper Visitors Center and Chamber of Commerce, 109 S. Commerce Street, in the train depot, tel. 888-285-7373, www.visitculpep­erva.com.

Culpeper Renaissance, Inc., tel. 540-825-4416, www.culpe­per­down­town.org.

Event

Culpeper’s annual Fourth of July celebration brings 10,000 people to downtown. Davis Street is closed for an antique car show and parade. (tel. 888-285-7373)

Fredericksburg

Around Town

Old Town Fredericksburg on an unseasonably warm February Saturday is alive with activity. Shoppers going in and out of antiques galleries and boutiques; college students with backpacks; artists at work in their studios. It’s even warm enough for lunch-goers to sit out at sidewalk café tables, soaking up the late winter sun hitting Caroline Street at just the right angle.

In one block of this street we noted a fascinating diversity of businesses: a tarot card reader, a train, coin and stamp shop, a tobacco shop and an all-natural café. Around the corner on Hanover Street we found a silver and goldsmith shop, Art First Gallery & Studios (tel. 540-371-7107, www.artfirstgallery.com), a cooperative outlet for local artisans, and Dan Finnegan’s pottery studio, where you can watch him work on his salt-glazed stoneware, a skill he learned in England (tel. 540-371-7255). Across the street, Dan is helping to create new artists through The Back Door Pottery, which offers classes and workshops to aspiring potters (same phone number). For even more opportunities to see artists at work, purchase their art, or try your hand at your own, there’s Liberty Town Arts Workshop in the former Fredericksburg Plumbing Supply on Liberty Street. Its 12,000 square feet provides work and exhibit space for 40 artists and dozens of students. (tel. 540-371-7255)

The moniker “Liberty” isn’t merely window-dressing. These are the very streets Thomas Jefferson and George Mason walked down on their way to The Rising Sun Tavern where they hammered out a draft of Virginia