Boston → Cape Cod → New York → Philadelphia → Virginia Beach → Charlotte → Nashville

The drive from Philadelphia to Virginia Beach was a longer one at about 5 hours.
We arrived at the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel right as the sun was setting, which made for a beautiful welcome to Virginia Beach.

For dinner, we stopped at Harris Teeter to pick up some food, wine, and beer. By the time we got to our hotel, it was completely dark. Since our hotel was right on the boardwalk, we decided to go on a boozy stroll. We stayed up late that night, drinking, eating, and watching old reruns of Impractical Jokers.

When we woke up the next morning, the sun was just beginning to rise above the ocean – right in front of our unit. With the sun illuminating the dolphins playing in the waves, it was a sight to see.

We started the morning with another walk along the boardwalk – this time with coffee in hand. If there’s one thing I learned from this trip, it’s that every beach should have a boardwalk. We absolutely loved walking on that boardwalk.

When we got back to our hotel, we enjoyed some mimosas on our balcony, got into our swimsuits, and headed down to the nearly empty beach where we lay in the sun and ate sushi from Harris Teeter while enjoying the perfect 75-degree weather. This was the most laid-back we had felt during our entire vacation and we decided that we were going to soak in every second of it.

Due to the timing of our trip, I have a feeling we got a totally skewed impression of Virginia Beach. Our experience there was so peaceful and relaxing that by the time we had to leave at around 1:00 that day, we were definitely not ready to go.

But we knew we had a long drive ahead of us, so we packed up our rental car and headed towards the final stops of our road trip: Charlotte & Nashville.