It wasn’t long after settling next to my beachfront hotel’s pool that my morning coffee was accompanied by a thunderous roar overhead. That noise, our guide told us, is what many locals in Virginia Beach call “the sound of freedom,” and specifically the calling cry of the F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jets. The supersonic booms are just a part of life in this city situated where Chesapeake Bay meets the Atlantic Ocean as it’s home to Naval Air Station Oceana, the U.
S. Navy’s East Coast Master Jet Base. Indeed, the region has a total of 15 military installations, including the world’s largest naval base in neighbouring Norfolk, representing all branches of the U.
S. military and sporting more than 80,000 active-duty personnel. For Virginia Beach, the military is a proud aspect of its identity right alongside its famous seafood and boardwalk.
There’s plenty to see and do in the city of 455,000, as I discovered during a recent weekend visit. Here are some ideas for your Virginia Beach adventure: Although Virginia Beach only turned 60 years old as a city in 2023, the first landing of the English colonialists happened here on April 26, 1607. First Landing Cross marks the site where the crewmen from the three ships made landfall at Cape Henry.
(Jamestown, Va. was the first permanent English settlement in May 1607.) Across the road is Cape Henry Lighthouse 1792, which was the first lighthouse authorized by the first Congress of the newly founded United States.
Today you.