Some people travel frequently, for work or for pleasure. Others rarely venture out and travel only for very special occasions. Whichever category you fall into, and whether you’re staying in a hotel for one night or one month, comfort somehow takes on a new level of importance. A quality mattress, technology like Wifi that prevents irritating interruptions to your life, plenty of hot water for your morning shower, a satisfying meal, and access to coffee are simple things we take for granted at home but are glaringly obvious when missing. It’s like we all turn into the Princess and the Pea and notice every little discomfort.
Harrisonburg’s newest hotel, Hotel Madison, takes every measure to ensure their guests are, at the very least, comfortable. Brandy and I know this first hand, because we got to spend a night there checking out all it has to offer!! And we’re gonna break it all down for you, right now.
Then, Now, and Beyond
Hotel Madison has been in the works for years, starting with a local developer and JMU graduate from Bergton. Although the hotel has a 50-year land lease from JMU, it is privately owned and financed by investors. Designers from P3 Design Collective operated around four words when envisioning the hotel’s style: subtle sophistication and rustic elegance. This vision touches every inch of the place, from the southern style seating in Montpelier Restaurant and Bar and the sharply dressed lobby, to simple and clean adornments in the 230 guest rooms and suites.
Unlike many chain hotels, Hotel Madison is deeply invested in the local community and mindful of its impact on Harrisonburg and the Shenandoah Valley. Hotel Madison collaborates with JMU’s Hart School of Hospitality, Sport and Recreation Management by providing classrooms, offices, and on-site academic instruction to students pursuing a degree in hospitality management. To put this in perspective, 45 schools in the United States offer this kind of partnership, and JMU’s Hart School is the only one with on-site classrooms at a hotel.
Another way Hotel Madison thought of the Harrisonburg community during its planning was to make sure to honor the recently approved Northend Greenway’s path by allowing extra space on the MLK Way side of the hotel. And, the hotel is certified Virginia Green. Hospitality businesses who earn this distinction have shown that they’re reducing their carbon footprint by adopting a host of environmentally friendly policies (such as not offering plastic straws, using recyclable carryout containers, and even installing electric car charging stations in the parking deck). Director of Public Relations Eddie Bumbaugh hopes to install solar panels in the future. For now, the hotel will be hosting the Virginia Green Annual Conference in April. One last note about partnering with the local community: DECA students at Broadway High School are currently designing a “Keys to the City” perks program specifically for Hotel Madison. Hotel guests will be able to show their room keys at various local businesses and receive a discount or reward of some kind.
Eating and Drinking
I realize it’s entirely possible that you skimmed/scrolled right on past the first section of this article just to get to the food photos, and I don’t blame you one bit. Shew doggie, we ate til we couldn’t see straight.
We opted for an early-ish dinner (okay, Golden Girls early – 4pm) at Montpelier Restaurant and Bar because Brandy needed that gorgeous sunlight to fall in perfect slants on that gorgeous food. When we arrived, we were presented with two appetizers prepared by Chef Ryan Youngman: the Montpelier Nachos and the Fried Green Tomatoes (more of that southern charm!). The nachos’ secret ingredient that makes them better than all other nachos combined is Bowman Bros Bourbon BBQ smoked brisket. Along with the smoked queso blanco, serrano chiles, black beans, slaw, avocado, and pico, we found it extremely hard to stop eating them. The portion is ample (and that’s a euphemism for “How do I eat this whole thing without the other customers noticing?”) and served on a really pretty live edge wooden pedestal. The Fried Green Tomatoes with tobasco aioli, roasted corn, cilantro, piquillo peppers, and cotija had a kick I wasn’t expecting but was just right nonetheless. Our cocktails arrived in festive mason jars, and the long, sexy bar with its 3-inch granite anchors the space.
We also ordered the Seafood Pappardelle with scallops (SO TENDER), shrimp, Virginia crab, house chorizo, roasted peppers, charred heirloom tomatoes, and foraged (!) mushrooms; the New York strip (could not have been cooked better) with two sides of our choice — we chose loaded mac and crispy Brussels sprouts; and one more appetizer, because why not? The Goat Cheese Brulee with a big beautiful hunk of local honeycomb right in the middle of it.
The restaurant has a private dining room named for Dolley Madison that you can reserve for large groups or events where you need privacy. On the Main Street side of the restaurant is the coffee bar serving Chestnut Ridge Coffee. This is a full-service coffee shop with coffee drinks, smoothies, pastries, and the like. All of this — Montpelier Restaurant, the bar, and the coffee shop — is available to the general public AND to hotel guests alike! So yes, this can be your new happy hour or morning coffee spot!
Other little things that make this restaurant and bar special:
• There’s a charging port at every seat.
• There’s a communal table in the center if you’re alone or just want to meet someone new. You could also spread out your laptop there.
• They reserved space for some loungey, comfortable seating in between the bar area and the dining room. I mean, really, they want you to be comfy.
• The coffee shop accepts the JAC card and is right there next to campus, students!
Making the Most of Your Stay
Sure, you could leave the hotel and walk to a zillion awesome downtown locations, and Hotel Madison would totally endorse that decision. But let us show you what you can do inside the hotel. (And by the way, we did these things right after eating a giant meal at Montpelier.)
You can go burn it off in the Fitness Center, lol.
All kidding aside, this is a really nice fitness center for a hotel. Multiple cardio machines, plenty of weight lifting machines, plus dumbbells, medicine balls, and mats. And with several TVs and fancy A/V equipment on the cardio machines, you don’t have to forego entertainment to keep your mind off of how much your thighs burn.
Then you could go to the salt water pool. A large garage-style door lets in tons of natural light and opens onto a sunny patio.
You can take a relaxing bath in your clean and modern hotel room bathroom. I’m almost six feet tall and fit in there just fine!
Or you can hang out by the fireplace in the lobby and indulge in a little snack or drink at Quills Casual Dining.
Hotel Madison’s mezzanine offers more lounging space and a long wall for art work. Hotel Madison is one of the First Friday gallery locations — not only will they showcase local art, but local musicians will fill the lobby with live music.
Don’t forget to stop by the gift shop. There you’ll find lots of JMU apparel and merchandise (hats, keychains, ornaments, for example), Shenandoah Valley shirts and hats, wine glasses, leather coasters made by Lineage Goods, Shirley’s Popcorn, Route 11 Chips, Warfels Chocolates, and other snacks and beverages, some of which in biodegradable packaging. Soon to come: products from Blue Ridge Dog.
What Else?
Other notable features include a Business Center should you need some office time, complimentary valet parking in the Mason Street deck (and this is for hotel guests AND Montpelier Restaurant and Bar customers!), and tons of space on the north side of the hotel for conferences and other large groups. There are three ballrooms, the Madison Boardroom, and the Blue Ridge Room. The carpet in the Grand Ballroom is actually an aerial view of the Shenandoah Valley.
Down the hall from our room on the 7th floor is the Presidential Suite. This 2-bedroom, 2.5-bathroom apartment (1546 square feet, y’all) sleeps 6 and is perfect for folks who are here for an extended period and want to be able to cook their own meals and feel right at home.
Ya didn’t think we left there without having breakfast, did ya?! We stuffed ourselves with Griddled French Toast Sliders with vanilla custard, peach jam, whipped cream, and pure maple syrup…
… the Shenandoah Breakfast, which is two farm eggs any style, house potatoes, toast, and your choice of house thick-cut cherry smoked bacon, country style pork sausage, chicken apple sausage, or Edwards ham steak…
… AND the Blue Ridge Sandwich, a perfectly gooey concoction of griddled ham, house cherry smoked bacon, fried farm eggs, and Hoffman smoked cheddar on buttered ciabatta!
You might be saying to yourself, “This place is amazing, clearly, but I already live in Harrisonburg. Why would I want to stay at Hotel Madison??” Well, you don’t have to. But think: next time you have relatives coming in whom you really don’t want in your house, you can direct them to a very nice hotel and not feel bad about it! Or maybe your college buddies are coming in for Homecoming festivities. Or maybe your employer or organization wants to hold a conference of some kind. Or maybe you’re getting married and need a venue that can do EVERYTHING — the wedding, the reception, and the lodging! Or maybe you just want to have dinner and a nice glass of wine. They’ve even initiated a reward points system to encourage folks to leave their usual hotel chain and stay in a local, green, community-minded, modern, and gorgeous new facility.
Mark Your Calendars
– February 14 – 16: Valentine’s Dinner. Montpelier Restaurant and Bar will be serving a Valentine’s Tasting Menu including 5 courses and optional wine pairing. Reservations are encouraged. The menu will be available Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night.
– February 22 – 24: Winter Wine Weekend. A learning, tasting, experiencing weekend dedicated to wine and the transformative grape. This is a one of a kind event, for beginners and connoisseurs alike featuring seminars, speakers, wine and culinary events, wine films, a blending workshop and more.
– March 4 – 10: Taste of Downtown. Montpelier Restaurant and Bar is excited to participate in Taste of Downtown this year! Watch their Facebook page for details.
– Monday through Friday, 3 – 6pm is Happy Hour at Montpelier Restaurant and Bar!
Thanks, Eddie!
Copyright © 2012-19 · All Rights Reserved · ilovemyburg.com. Words by Katie Mitchell. Photos by Brandy Somers. This material may not be copied, downloaded, reproduced, or printed without express written consent. Thank you for respecting our intellectual property.
Here’s how a Secretly Y’all event works. They 
After the introductions and explanations of the rules, the show began. Up walked Sylvia, sporting sweet tattoos and a Standing Rock tee shirt, to deliver a story entitled “God or Not.” Having grown up in a mixed faith family, she felt bamboozled by all the conflicting messages she received about religion, God, prayer, and the afterlife. She recalled praying about becoming a boy, which didn’t happen. Later, a salamander she thought surely was dead pulled a Lazarus and she thought, “Methodist prayers work! I’ve just been doing it wrong all this time!” The climax of her story felt like an action/adventure movie with representatives of all her family’s religions converging on her uncle’s funeral to fight over how it’s done.
His story started with his wonder and awe about…. basically anything. Living in a small town, he frequently found himself bored and would get excited about something as simple as hail. One time a tornado was heading straight for his town, and he understood that to be something dangerous, but he didn’t really know exactly what a tornado was. In the storm cellar, the wind created a sort of pecking noise, and his magical realist brain deduced that a tornado must be a bird. A giant, hungry, mean bird that would just swoop down and carry off the whole dang town! But more exciting than the tornado was the time his sister landed in the hospital to have her tonsils removed. What a wonder the hospital was! He just had to get back there somehow. But how? He decided to fake appendicitis so he could stay in the hospital. I kid you not, he actually faked his symptoms well enough that the doctors operated on him, and when they got in there to remove the appendix, it looked fine… so they did exploratory surgery looking for what could possibly be causing all this excruciating pain! And he has the scar to prove it, which he showed us. Unbelievable. He bamboozled everyone.
Lauren’s story was a bit less violent, but she did get bamboozled by a cat, which might be just as bad. And hers was just as much a love story as it was a story about cat pee. In 2009, she was living in her first ever house with a number of cats. Her boyfriend came for a visit and remarked that the guest bathroom had a really strong ammonia odor. The litter box was in that bathroom, so Lauren assumed that was the explanation. Upon closer inspection, however, Lauren discovered that the pipe under the sink was FULL of cat pee, which had corroded the metal and blown a hole in it, causing said cat pee to drip all over the place inside the cabinet! So Lauren and her doting boyfriend cleaned out the cabinet, and he replaced the damaged pipe. But, why the heck was a cat peeing in the sink, and which cat was it?? To discourage the little deviant from peeing in the sink, Lauren filled the sink with water, which seemed to work. But she asked herself, “Am I really going to live my life like this?” And one day, out of the blue, as she walked past that bathroom, Lauren saw one of the cats sitting on the toilet. To this day, that cat still pees like a human, and Lauren married her boyfriend.
Sometimes we’re bamboozled by urban legends. Storyteller Eric believed his whole life until not long ago that you might die if you didn’t wait 30 minutes after eating to get in the pool. He also recalled, as a teenager, shaving 4 or 5 times a day because he believed it would grow back thicker every time he shaved. And 23 years ago he learned from a Simpsons episode that toilets flush in the opposite direction in the southern hemisphere. He wowed lots of people with this interesting nugget of knowledge! Unfortunately, it’s just not true. We feel you, Eric. I guarantee you someone reading this right now is having an uncomfortable epiphany.
The last storyteller on the “set list” was Andy, whose bamboozlement takes the form of messing with other people. For example, at the bank one day, the teller remarked on the strange weather, and Andy baited her: “Yes! I hear it’s caused by…El Zorro.” There was a long silence, during which the teller must have decided she couldn’t restrain herself. “Sir, I think you mean El Nino.” Andy did it just to see what her reaction would be. But his best example of bamboozling others was the time he decided to drive through the toll booth with a whoopie cushion and let out a “bleating fart” right at the moment he handed the attendant his payment. Approaching the booth, his mind juggled all the moving pieces of this fandangled plan, and instead of stepping on the brake to slow his roll and unleash the cushion, he stepped on the accelerator, lurched forward, and HIT THE TOLL BOOTH! And then the cushion farted, but I don’t think the attendant heard it because she was quite upset and yelling, “Get out of here, crazy!” He didn’t even pay the toll.
If you want to witness or be a part of the next Secretly Y’all show, there’s another one coming up in March. Keep your eye on the 
Copyright © 2012-19 · All Rights Reserved · ilovemyburg.com. Words by Katie Mitchell. Photos by Brandy Somers. This material may not be copied, downloaded, reproduced, or printed without express written consent. Thank you for respecting our intellectual property.
I remember my dad’s basement fondly. On one side, his workshop. I remember spinning the pin on the vise clamp — open, shut… open, shut. Sometimes with a Barbie perilously squished inside. Other times holding a piece of wood Daddy asked me to sand for probably no purpose at all. All his screwdrivers and hammers and wrenches hung on hooks, arranged neatly in rows by size, with every square inch of space on the pegboard used to its maximum potential. I remember little olive or pimento jars of nails and screws and pins and such. I remember a lot of sawdust. 
The Friendly Fermenter uses a one-barrel brewing system which produces 2 – 4 kegs at a time. For this reason, 
The Woof! Russet IPA was more malty than other IPAs if that’s the end of the IPA spectrum you enjoy, unlike the Waning Light APA which to me seemed hoppier. Both were fantastic.
In addition to the classes and supplies and delicious beers, 
During the hours prior to the 
Court Square Theater has brought us such delightful events as the 
Some folks were visibly surprised when this young bluegrass band unleashed Bill Withers’ “Ain’t No Sunshine,” but honestly, Amy’s voice is 
My favorite song of the evening was “Train Bound to Nowhere.” I think we’ve all ridden this train at some point. It’s about being “all alone now,” losing the one you love and not knowing “what it’s like without you.” Only… we do know. We just forget how lonely we were before we found love, and when that happens, gratitude falls victim to complacency… inertia sets in. We get so numbed by what’s in front of us. Where’s the jumpstart? What’s the defibrillator?? Eventually the whole thing flatlines, and then you’re “trying to get on without you,” but getting nowhere. 
After a quick intermission warranting a fresh beer, David Wax Museum hit the stage. David Wax and Suz Slezak, now married, started the band ten years and eight records ago and recently performed their 1000th show together. Between songs, they told us parts of their endearing story, like how one time in Mexico, David and Suz were just trying to get to a cantina when they got swept up in a Virgin Mary pilgrimage with thousands of people. Their song “Maria” was born of that experience. Indeed, many of their songs are influenced by their time in Mexico and Mexican folk music. They also described the early years of the band, squatting in a hovel with no heat or water, which ultimately turned into the song “Don’t Lose Heart” (Guesthouse, 2015): “no money in the bank, no gas in the tank… we’re barely afloat, I should care but I don’t,” the title wailed in an attempt to convince themselves it’ll work out. COURAGE. Then they break into cheerful na-na-nas and la-la-las with no warning at all. The early days also involved a good deal of bartering and garnered them, among other weird items, a shank of lamb, some round steak, and a 2-months-old ziploc bag of crumbled cookies. You take what you can get, I suppose.
If you get a chance to see this band live, you must. First of all, I think it’s the only place you’ll see a denim camisole and gingham pants side by side. But more importantly, their sound is so much bigger in person. Each band member plays multiple instruments, picking them up and putting them down as if switching from one language to another mid-sentence. And sometimes they play more than one instrument at a time! Suz started on the squeezebox, which is like an entire brass band in a box, then switched to her fiddle, and then jumped up on a wooden box which she stomped with her boot heels while playing the fiddle AND SINGING. David’s big voice accompanies his ukulele and guitar in perfect proportion. As individuals, they are obviously skilled and talented… but on stage together, they perform with the intimacy they sing about, both facing each other and sharing a microphone, the heat between them challenging the harsh winter just outside with lines like “Turn on the light when we kiss” (“Lavender Street,” 
David and Suz — they are poets of circumstance. The audience got to sing along with them on “Harder Before It Gets Easier” (
I admit there were times (during both bands) I was enjoying the music so much that my pen slipped from my fingers and entire songs went by without my writing down a word. One of the last songs of the night was “Guesthouse,” the title track from their 2015 album, in which the speaker asks about 100 times, “Can I stay in your guesthouse?” The song describes the life of a nomadic musician, constantly searching for places to crash for the night. And maybe that’s exactly what it’s about — literally staying in someone’s guesthouse. But those of us who aren’t traveling performers might ascribe a different meaning to it. Maybe it’s about bridging the gap between two lonely souls, about finding the courage to move one step closer to companionship, about finally leaving behind whatever tragedy drove us to solitude in the first place. Maybe it’s about baby steps back to normalcy. Maybe it’s about looking at intimacy straight on. 
In short…
i love my burg. 