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Retirement ParadiseVirginia Beach, Virginia |
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Virginia Beach, site of the
First Landing of the English settlers as they made their way to set up
Jamestown in 1607, is lined with 33 miles of beach front. It has the
longest beach of any town in America. Part of the beach is on the
Atlantic; part, on the Chesapeake Bay. There is even beach in secluded wetlands.
Virginia Beach ranks high in median income, fitness and having something
to do other than watch television. Recreation, not television, is King in Virginia Beach.
It's been a favorite haunt for such luminaries as Blackbeard the Pirate
and Richard Nixon. Today, it's all yours!
Top Selling Sporting Goods
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“A land not to be excelled by any other what-so-ever,” wrote an enthralled Sir Ralph Lane in the spring of 1586. On an April morning in 1607, Master George Percy proclaimed with wonder: "Heaven and Earth never agreed better to frame a place for man's habitations than Virginia." Master Percy beamed in awe as he surveyed the tangled landscape--a thicket of blooming dogwoods, yellow jasmine and forested recesses. He was standing ashore at the ancient meeting place of the great waters of the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. His tiny group would eventually make their way to form the Jamestown settlement. But for now they were pausing. They had landed in the New World. You’ve Come a Long Way, VirginiaVirginia Beach has come a long way since Master Percy’s spring morning. It has grown into Virginia’s largest city. It ranks nationally as the:
Recreation is KingVirginia Beach is aswim in recreation. Recreation flows through its veins the way money swirls down Wall Street. Washington might live for politics and Hollywood for entertainment. Virginia Beach lives for recreation. Recreation comes easy for a town with 33 miles of beachfront, the longest stretch of public beach in the country. But water is more than beachline. Water is Everywhere! Ocean Beaches… the Great Chesapeake Bay… Rivers… Creeks… Lakes… Marshes. When you seek respite from the toasted Boardwalk crowds on a summer afternoon, head for the Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge. Its pristine, secluded beaches will open up 8,000 acres of wetlands you can temporarily call your own. These wetland beaches are off-limits to your car, but you can paddle a kayak or canoe. Aquatic hearts find homes everywhere in Virginia Beach. You can pontoon around barrier islands, pier fish, fish offshore, surf, scuba dive. Scores of shipwrecks on the ocean floor await your snorkeling and diving adventure. Surf year round. The first time anyone surfed on the East Coast . . . well, it was “Big Jim” Jordan in Virginia Beach, 1918. He schlepped windward and steered triumphantly atop a 9-foot, 110 pound surfboard from Hawaii, a gift from his uncle. |
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Today, the Beach hosts the Annual East Coast Surfing Championships and Beach Sports Festival. The locals practice for this event every day of the year. The water fosters another form of recreation, eating seafood. Expect high standards. You're in Tidewater on the Halfshell. Similarly high standards extend to the city’s network of public recreation centers. Their size and modernity give them a community-college look rather than the appearance of neighborhood recreation halls. Add year-round golf, 188 tennis courts plus miles and miles of spectacular bike trails, and you’ll agree that Recreation is King. Your Virginia Beach LandingThe airport is in next-door Norfolk. Fares are low because of the beneficent presence of Southwest Airlines. Even Californians rave about a Norfolk landing as second only to San Francisco in grandeur. See nothing but water. Hit land unseen. Be swallowed up by towering trees. That’s a Norfolk landing. If you’re driving, take U.S. Highway 60 after the Hampton Roads Tunnel rather than the quicker I-64 Blandway. Route 60 lines the historic, scenic Chesapeake Bay. |
Lynnhaven, Blackbeard and OystersAs you meander into Virginia Beach, note the placid, middle-class neighborhood of Lynnhaven. Adam Thoroughgood settled here in 1635 at age 18. He led the way for more than 100 other Lynnhaven settlers, including ancestors of George Washington and Robert E. Lee. He named the place after his familial home in England, King’s Lynn. By the 1700s, Lynnhaven had become a pirate’s den. The notorious Blackbeard had made it his hideout and a nearby hill his lookout. Blackbeard Hill still dominates the idyllic shores of Lynnhaven Bay. Imagine oysters galore when you think of Lynnhaven Bay. Lynnhaven Oysters were once considered delicacies by the Kings and Queens of Europe. |
Traveling through HistoryAs Highway 60 heads toward the Ocean, you’ll be traveling through the same forests that amazed the English settlers 400 years ago. When Highway 60 ends, hang a right. The turn will take you toward the heart of the Beach resort. Freedom from Hurricanes, Earthquakes and TornadoesYou’ll be driving by the Edgar Cayce Institute of Psychic Research. Its Founder Edgar Cayce, also the Father of Holistic Medicine, once had a vision that Virginia Beach was the place in America safest from hurricanes, earthquakes and tornadoes. He responded by moving there from Alabama in 1925. He opened a hospital with help from New York financier Morton Blumenthal.
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The 77 year-old Queen of Virginia Beach looms ever larger as you peer down Atlantic Avenue. Once the flagship of American luxury hotels, the Cavalier has gone through a regimen of renovations in pursuit of youthful grandeur.
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Spend a night at the Cavalier and you’ll be joining the ranks of movie stars and 7 Presidents. You might even find the mind of Richard Nixon. Nixon loved the Cavalier so much that rumor has him chugging 18 minutes of missing Watergate tapes into a chubby fireplace in the hotel’s basement. Patriotism lives well at the Cavalier. During World War II, the Navy converted it into a lookout station over the Atlantic. The indoor swimming pool served as a school for radar training. The bottom of the pool was a classroom. |
One week in 1944, top brass from all Military branches descended on the hotel in secret. They were using assumed names. By the time they had left, they had laid down the battle plans for D-Day in Europe. The plans for the end of World War II in Europe were drawn up, not at the Pentagon, but at the Cavalier Hotel in Virginia Beach.
The night the War ended, the Hotel threw a party. Waiter Carlos Wilson made $600 in tips that evening.
Virginia Beach for Everyone, Every Season, Every YearVirginia Beach is yours if you’re after a recreation-filled retirement in an economical, upscale, friendly setting. The locals will greet you as one of their own. You’ll enjoy all the amenities befitting the nation’s 4th highest median income but at a cost of living that is still below the national average. A $50,000 per year Virginia Beach level of living would cost you $90,000 in Boston, $77,000 in Washington, DC, $58,000 in Atlanta, or $110,000 in San Francisco. A Trial RunIt’s easy to give Virginia Beach a trial run. During the winter months, some beachfront hotels rent out beautiful suites on a monthly basis. Monthly rentals are a steal October through March on this hotel row built for the expansive crowds of summer. You’ll love Station One. The suites are really superbly furnished one-bedroom apartments renting way below Anywhere-Else, USA, apartment averages. You get . . . spectacular beachfront living, the calming sound of the Ocean, a wonderfully friendly, civic-minded community and a chance to check out this retirement paradise on your own terms. You’ll even have time to make some of those uniquely Virginia Beach choices: “Do you want to live on the water?” “Do you prefer to live ‘inland’ or near the beach?” Such decisions! If you come for the winter, stay longer. Once you’ve experienced Virginia Beach—once you’ve gotten sand in your shoes—and you leave, you’ll always wish you had stayed. |
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