Roadside tourist traps are nothing new. "Cosmos Mystery Area", "The Thing", "WonderWorld" these are all real places with real stupid outcomes. But, most of these places only cost a few bucks and they do, in fact, have something to show you, even if it is just a snake with two heads. (Which, by the way, is awesome) All of these establishments also have pretty massive gift shops attached as well. These roadside carnys really just want you to buy a piece of geode with your name on it, misspelled, of course, because that's where they make the real money. It is literally mind boggling how many of these places have sucked me in and yes, I have the pictures and fridge magnets to prove it. However, none was so insulting as Colonial Williamsburg.
Williamsburg charges you $37 just to get in and once you have bled out all your cash for this roadside stop you realize, upon entering, that anyone can enter for free! There are local college students out on a jog, senior citizens out walking their dogs and other such townies out and about all over this place. There is also nothing "Colonial" about Williamsburg. It is a re-creation of a period town and apparently that period contained gift shops galore!!! Turns out that the admission ticket just gets you into a giant "old-timey" strip mall.
Once you're in, there is no getting your money back so I took it in stride and proceeded to obtain a nice buzz bordering on total drunkenness. Then I made some tactical errors. I ended up buying a fife, a book of music for my fife, a candy apple that had seen better days, and two $6 candy bars and then I fell into a drunken coma in a Barnes and Noble.
I'm not sure if I learned anything about America at Colonial Williamsburg...no wait, I did learn something. Americans are geniuses at capitalism. I'm sure we were selling candy apples to the natives the second we got off that boat and buying land for beads, because we are heartless capitalistic dousche bags. And to think, all this because I wanted to see a snake with two heads?
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