I took a day trip up to Old Town Winchester, VA on Saturday. Winchester is what I would call a village, but i guess in Virginia’s terms it s a city. Old Town has a 3 block long area that is closed off as a pedestrian mall, which seems like it is the tourist focus for the whole city. The oldest buildings there probably date to the middle of the 19th century, with many of them having unfortunate 1950’s ground floor storefront renovations. But if you look to the second story you’ll be surprised by some of the wonderful architectural details.
The thing that I found as completely odd was that we arrived around 3 on Saturday of Labor Day weekend and most of the stores and restaurants were closed. In addition, there was a large number of vacant storefronts. There was quite a few people walking up and down the strip, but with only a handful of boutiques and two open restaurants there was a general feeling of disappointment. The strangest part about this was that as we drove away from downtown we started finding more and more open stores and restaurants.