QUOTH THE RAVEN

For those of you that are wondering where I have been hiding myself I have just returned from my holiday where I have been visiting with family in the USA and catching up with all the gossip, travelling around, sightseeing and of course purchasing lots of great new items for the booth and for the vintage fairs.

Over the next couple of weeks I will try and blog about some of my more interesting visits and also show you a few of my wonderful items, some of which I have to admit are not going anywhere.


Hubby loves the American Civil War and we always visit some of the battlefields or areas where battles took place and one of the towns we visited was Petersburg in North Virginia.  As well as the battle fields there are plenty of places to shop so it is a win, win situation.  Hubby lets me shop and I let him visit the battlefields and we do a bit of the history stuff which I have to say is no loss to me as I also enjoy these.


Whilst there it was 97 degree heat with  high humidity, we were definately flagging and we went into a little book shop/coffee shop Rivers Edge on 12 West Street

 Now for those of you who have never been to the US they do love us Brits and we always seem to get a little bit of  extra attention.  The shop was originally a hotel and it was the place where the American author and poet Edgar Allan Poe stayed on his honeymoon after marrying his 13 year old cousin Eliza Clemm, and although the downstairs was set out as a interiors shop/book shop and a place to relax and drink good coffee, upstairs where they honeymooned was no longer in use.  On chatting to the owner he offered to show us the upstairs and with no further ado we took him up on his offer and climbed the stairs. 

Do you think this was the en-suite

The guy who owns it is slowly going to restore it and reopen it but as can be seen from the pictures he has a heck of a job to do and I can see it taking many years before he has it finished but he is trying to preserve it as best he can in the meantime.  He tried for years to purchase the property and finally succeeded and I wish him all the luck in the world with his project.


Both hubby and I felt  really privlaged to be allowed the view a little bit of literary history and the icing on the cake was that the coffee was one of the best we had this visit and the orange frosted cake was to die for.