Rediscovering Richmond

The forecast for the afternoon of Wednesday, April 28 was a gorgeous one. Too nice to stay inside and work. It was a slowish work week, so I took a day off and decided to strike out and do some exploring.  In all my years of college, Belle Isle was a place I knew existed, but never did get out to visit. Belle Isle is a small island in the middle of the James River, accessible by a pedestrian (& cycle-friendly) bridge near downtown. To the best that I could tell, there are no vehicles on the island.  Belle Isle Pedestrian Bridge I ended up spending about 3 hours there, racking up about 6 miles of walking, with a brief stop in a shady spot to enjoy a sandwich and I drink I'd brought with me.  It's not a huge island; about half a mile from north to south, comprised of about 55 acres total. But it has a ton of walking & biking trails; some pretty easy, some more challenging. There are large flat rocks in the river where folks like to set up picnics, spread out a towe...

 After a month of tortuous apartment hunting from afar in Houston, TX (side note: the world of "virtual tours" of apartments and homes has a LOT of room for improvement), I ended up securing myself a duplex unit in the neighborhood of Bellevue. Never having spent much time on the north side of the city in college, I really had no frame of reference for what the neighborhood was like, but the realtor who was helping me assured me that it was a great one, as did a college friend of mine who never got around to leaving the city after graduation. :) And so - sight unseen, I became a resident of Bellevue. And sure enough, it has turned out to be an incredibly charming neighborhood. It is pedestrian- and cyclist-friendly (I do have a bike, but I am more of walker), the residents are friendly, and the houses are lovely. The house I'm in is approximately 100 years old, which feels like it's probably the average age of the neighborhood.  The area that would eventually encompas...