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Colonial Williamsburg is a weird here because it’s very curated like a living museum. And a “feast for the senses” usually steers the mind to the opposite of that.
How does a "feast for the senses" usually steer the mind to the opposite of that?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Joakim3
Subjectively? You'll get 90 different answers from 90 different people depending on what their preferences are.
I haven't been anywhere that has been more of a feast for the senses than Manhattan in New York. Always something to look at, something to hear, something to smell (good and bad) etc.
It's a subtler thing than being in a busy city, but I find that a hike in the Pt Reyes woods
is a complete sensory experience... first and foremost visual, of course -- being among the
tall Douglas Firs, and all the other green things that make up the forest.... but there's also
the scent of Bay Laurel trees, and the sounds of the ocean in the distance and of woodpeckers pecking...
How does a "feast for the senses" usually steer the mind to the opposite of that?
Everywhere has sights, sounds, tastes, smells. But “feasts for the senses” usually means overwhelming and coming from a ton of directions. Hence most people interpret it as a lively urban environment with a myriad of stimuli. Colonial Williamsburg is the opposite of that, as it is basically a living museum with docents in costumes. It’s like London vs EPCOT’s England Pavilion.
Everywhere has sights, sounds, tastes, smells. But “feasts for the senses” usually means overwhelming and coming from a ton of directions. Hence most people interpret it as a lively urban environment with a myriad of stimuli. Colonial Williamsburg is the opposite of that, as it is basically a living museum with docents in costumes. It’s like London vs EPCOT’s England Pavilion.
A feast for the senses doesn't need to be overwhelming or from a lively urban environment, just a place that has very distinctive sights, smells, sounds, tastes, etc, which Colonial Williamsburg certainly does.
Some quotes from people about Williamsburg:
"When we'd be making vacation plans, I'd suggest coming to Williamsburg to which my Mother always laughingly said 'You just want to go smell there.' That's when I realized it was true. Difficult to identify because it is a mixture of so many things but the most prominent maybe wood smoke, 'old' wood in buildings, spices. My Mother was definitely right."
"Williamsburg is burning wood, night-time cressets, ginger cakes, farm animals, working kitchen aromas, the dewy grass, the gardens, boxwood, magnolia, the original floors, the bakery, and how they all blend together, like a beautiful perfume to create that 'je ne sais quoi' in the air, that like you, I can't pin a name to."
"A combination of the boxwoods & the gardens and mixture combination of all of the soap scents (which I keep in bowls in the living room), the ham biscuits & ginger cakes in the Raleigh Tavern & the old, creaky floors of the historical buildings. You could set me down folded in CW & I could pick it out immediately!"
"If you grew up or worked in Colonial Williamsburg or were near it often, you know the smell of fall’s arrival by this place and these means only; that first scent of wood smoke wafting from atop houses through tall brick chimneys and various ceremonial fires is the true ushering of seasonal change to autumn in our former Colonial Capital. This ubiquitous scent spans through winter, but at the cusp of fall it hits you in one instant and all the years before melt into one brief but comprehensive sensory overload to remind you of all the steps you took here.
As kids we’d already been told by our Mothers to put on a jacket, but this scent was at times as equally as forceful in communicating, or perhaps reinforcing, our Mothers’ directives. If you smelled the wood burning during daylight hours you knew the crisp, cool air would at the least caress you gently soon enough. If you didn’t take the cue, the air would bring a smack of more force, and so often I recall my stubbornness in finding this out, unwilling to leave the warm weather my friends and I played in. Yet internally I embraced this scent like a lost lover, hugging it within me for all the promise of the seasons ahead; the muted rainbow beauty of Fall, the sound of the late season games at Cary field, Halloween and the inherent allure of spookiness in a living history museum, and the anticipation of Thanksgiving and Christmas when our place in the world seemed to magically illuminate well beyond our reach. Perhaps that’s why we have an event titled “Grand Illumination,” and in our own way it was grand, without the pomp and circumstance that so often characterizes community traditions. If you took a moment to look in every direction, the magic of Christmas was as tangible as you’d ever know it to be.
Yet the magic of Christmas would pass and the winter months would see the streets virtually empty, jobs eliminated for two bare months in a local economy reliant on the bounty of tourism that the preceding months graced it with. I remember walking out of our front door on Duke of Gloucester (DOG as it is more often called) Street with nowhere to go, I just had cabin fever and wanted to feel the air. It was quiet in midafternoon and I felt all alone yet oddly comforted and at peace in my fragile teenage mind. In the evenings I sometimes laid on the brick archway of the entrance to Bruton Parish Church to listen to the organist practice. It was beautiful music that I couldn’t yet admit that I liked, and it filled the air outside the church. With few passersby to interrupt, it was my own concert as an unintentional and unknown audience.
...More than ever I’m longing to feel a chill in the air and smell wood fires burning in the distance. Let me grab that scent and hold it until my dreams let it go. More than ever I long to walk in cold, content loneliness on my beloved DOG Street, knowing with absolute conviction that flowers are sleeping all around me, resting before they bloom with original, illuminating brightness."
Again, all places of sights, smells, tastes, sounds. However there is a reason multiple people’s minds raced to New Orleans and NY when they heard the phrase “feast of the senses”.
Savannah
Charleston
New Orleans
Boardwalk at the jersey shore
MN state fair
Almost anywhere in Hawaii
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