<p>We are going to visit the University of Richmond soon so I thought I'd check to see if there is anything not likely to be on the official tour that we should be sure to see or notice or ask about the school, campus, or surrounding area. </p>
<p>We will probably be spending the weekend in Richmond before a Monday tour.</p>
<p>Suggestions appreciated!</p>
<p>Go to the James River Pony Pastures one of the afternoons you have off. A wonderful place next to the river with nice trails and swimming access in the river. Very beautiful area to pack a picnic dinner and watch the sunset.</p>
<p>Go check out to gym! It’s really nice! And make sure to eat in the dining hall, the food is amazing! Modlin is also really cool to explore.</p>
<p>agree with above- the gym and the cafeteria are musts and I would also add the science center- Gottwald.</p>
<p>The gym and d-hall are both top of the line. But you need to see the mummy!</p>
<p>I would check out the surrounding area. If you are into shopping there are two nice malls in the area. Upscale, Stony point is the closest 10 min from campus and the larger Short Pump mall slightly further in another direction. </p>
<p>There is also the area known as Cartown a few miles away towards the city which gives you a feel for the community with restaurants and small local shops. Richmond has a lot to offer including museums, parks and great variety of restaurants.</p>
<p>We are back from our visit to U Richmond. It is a beautiful campus, and I completely agree about the cafeteria! Wish I could go there for lunch today!
We were less than impressed with the city of Richmond though. Admittedly, we are not good at exploring a city. I need things to be pretty obvious, but I did try to do some basic research on what to do in Richmond before we left, and checked with hotel while we were there, and just didn’t find much. I knew we probably wouldn’t do much outside, because of the heat, so that limited us a bit. We started to head to an area described as the waterfront, but never did find what that was all about, and the downtown area that we saw was not that inviting, not bad, but not great. It didn’t help that right before we left I read some review somewhere (from some random person) warning people that ‘parts of Richmond’ are on a decline and not safe, so I think that made every area a but ‘suspect’ to me from the start. I just kept thinking that Richmond really needs help with marketing to visitors, and perhaps signage pointing the way to points of interest. So, overall, we didn’t dislike Richmond, but we didn’t see anything that really sold us the area either.</p>
<p>^^^ They try with those RVA oval thingies…</p>