When my good friend Anna got engaged and asked me to be one of her bridesmaids, her Maid of Honor pulled me in to help with planning a Richmond, Virginia bachelorette party. We had a great time in the city and our itinerary could apply for a variety of types of trips. Here’s what we got into during our time in The River City.

We arrived on Friday evening to our accommodation, a house near the Fan District in Richmond. The house’s location was ideal for being a short Uber ride from the majority of activities we had planned for the weekend. The house itself was in fairly good condition for a short stay with a large group.

Once settled, we made our way to Havana 59 downtown for dinner. Here we enjoyed mojitos, Cuban nachos (served using plantain chips), calamari, and I ordered Camarones Al Curry (shrimp in a coconut curry sauce) as my meal. The Havana vibe of the restaurant and open-air eating felt surprisingly summer-y on a balmy March evening.

One of the reasons we picked Havana 59 for dinner was because it was near where our ghost tour done by RVA Ghosts started from. We thought a ghost tour would be fun because Richmond is chock full of history, but I ended up a little disappointed as we spent most of our time walking from stop to stop and only heard a few spooky stories.

The next morning after breakfast at the house we made our way to the Belle Isle Footbridge to do a hike around Belle Isle. Belle Isle is an island in the James River that has an interesting history: it was a Civil War Prison Camp and then later was home to the Virginia Electric Power Company of which you can see the ruins of today. I really liked this easy hike and it was one of the highlights of the trip for me. Do note, there’s a small parking lot to access the trail head but it fills up quickly so I’d definitely recommend Ubering to the hike if you can, or getting there early. 

From Belle Isle we walked along the Canal Walk for about fifteen minutes to have lunch at Casa del Barco. They were full for their seating along the canal itself but the interior of the restaurant was vibrantly decorated which made up for it and the Mexican street corn along with their shrimp tacos hit the spot. 

After some rest back at the house, our evening activity was a brewery tour run by RVA Brew Crew. RVA Brew Crew runs private tours to Richmond breweries and they were really easy to organize our tour with. We picked the four breweries we wanted to visit and the day of the tour they picked us up from our accommodation and drove us to the locations. They let us play music of our choice on the bus (cue sing-a-longs to the Backstreet Boys!) and we were able to bring along our own beverages and snacks.

The breweries we went to were: Veil Brewery (Forest Hill location), Starr Hill Beer Hall, Hardywood Park Craft Brewery (Richmond city location), and Bingo Beer Co.

Veil Brewery was a perfect fit to start our evening because of their fitting name. The vibe here was very relaxed and family friendly, and our group sat outside on their patio. This was just outside downtown Richmond city. Next up was Starr Hill Beer Hall which is in the cool Scott’s Addition neighborhood which is home to a lot of breweries in converted warehouses. We sat outside on their deck. Then we ventured over to Hardywood Park Craft Brewery which had a stage with live music and a pizza kitchen. We ended our night at Bingo Beer Co. which is part arcade, part brewery. They had a DJ come on at 10pm and we had a fantastic time dancing the night away.

On Sunday morning we made our way thirty minutes outside the city to RVA Goat Yoga at Pactamere Farm to partake in their Sunday goat yoga session with farm-to-table brunch. This was a simple stretching yoga session complimented by many, many goats who are trained to jump on your back during the session. They seemed to love me as they jumped on me numerous times and their hooves felt like a deep tissue massage (complete with my back being sore the next day!). I had never done goat yoga before and really enjoyed this experience. After the yoga session we had some time to take photos with the goats and then were served a farm-to-table brunch. 

To get to Richmond and back home, I took the Amtrak train from the BWI Airport Station near Baltimore, Maryland to Richmond’s Staples Mill Road Station. The journey was fairly pleasant although slightly delayed on my way down to Richmond but overall I would consider taking the train again since it allowed me to relax and avoid I-95 traffic during Friday’s rush hour. My fare was $110 round trip and I booked the tickets four months ahead.