I have some guests from the UK this week--to celebrate our Independence Day! They're lots of fun and we do a lot of kidding back and forth! They actually live near Gravesend where Pocahontas is buried, but they prefered to stay in the Washington Suite instead of the Pocahontas Room!

I'm trying to prepare local things for them for breakfast and some things they don't have so often there. And waffles is one thing that all my English guests love! The recipe for the ones I make is on my website under recipes--and they really are delicious.

I've had more guests from the UK and the continent this year than I've had in all my 12 years of innkeeping--I guess the weak dollar is making travel cheaper for them, so they're taking advantage of it. All of them say that the prices here are quite reasonable for the first time ever for them--they generally rent a car since our public transportation is so poor. And they hear other guests complain about $4 a gallon gas---and they tell the Americans that gas is about $7 or $8 a gallon in the UK or the continent!

And I've had a lot more guests taking a two-night vacation here, but they don't live so far away--Yorktown is so hcarming and different from where they live, and having a room overlooking the river makes them think they're many miles away from home instead of just a few.

Amont other dishes, I'm serving soft-shell crabs on July 4th--the season for them begins here in May with the first big shed--when they're most plentiful--but we can get soft-shells most of the time through September. They're a real delicacy for many people--but some people are turned off by the dangling legs that they eat!

Corn pudding (my mother's recipe), pecan tarts (made with pecans from trees that I planted almost 30 years ago), crab-a-dab-a-doos, "my mother's best eggbread" (spoonbread--very Southern), and clams from the York River will be some of the local dishes I think they'll enjoy.