Charlottesville, Virginia

BeNicole2007
2y ago
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I moved here three years ago from about an hour away (where I grew up).

Charlottesville and the surrounding areas are beautiful.

Speaking in generalities, here is what I've found:

The people are mostly great. We have a major wealth discrepancy, but this diverse population seems to have mostly good peeps.

There are excellent restaurants, and if you're into beer, breweries here.

The central location to DC, the coast, SW VA, has been extra great for me and my wife. A quick hour drive can get you to a lot of amazing places.

Traffic is brought up on this subreddit a good bit, and while I agree with most folks who say, "Well, have you seen city inserted here?" I don't agree that Charlottesville doesn't have a traffic problem. Yes, DC/NOVA has worse traffic, but here the infrastructure just doesn't support the amount of cars on the road during rush hour. It is often gridlock for just the vast amount of cars coming and going at that time with minimal ways to avoid traffic.

CampyVA
6mo ago
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Wife and I moved here from Boston 14 years ago and love it. By far our favorite thing about moving here was the ability to buy a nice house on a little land outside of the city close to the mountains, and still have a very reasonable (20-30 min) commute to work/shopping/etc. If you’re looking to start a family, be sure to check out the western Albemarle county suburbs, especially Crozet.

People on this sub will talk about how bad the traffic is, but it’s really not compared to any “real” city. Our “rush hour” is actually an hour long, and it really isn’t that bad. Also, there is basically no traffic for the 4 months per year the UVA students are gone, and it’s glorious.

Yes we have homeless, but so does everyone now. It’s certainly worse than when we moved here, but I probably see no more than a few homeless people on any given day walking/driving around the city, and zero anywhere out in the county.

Yes, it’s expensive here, but all places lots of people want to live are, and coming from Vail, you will be fine.

ldice18
6mo ago
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We moved here 6 years ago and it would take something super massive to make us move. People love to complain about traffic but coming from a bigger city, it's fine here. Though people are terrible drivers 😂

I absolutely love the communities I've found and created. I don't have kids so I can't speak to that, but we love hiking, kayaking, breweries, wineries and good food so we're happy here.

This is the first place that has felt like "home" to me.

Everywhere has its issues but Cville is a great place to live!

shedfigure
6mo ago
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I lived in Boulder for 5 years before moving here (with a bunch of stops in between). Love a lot of the same things you do. Cville definitely has a better combination of food and outdoors than Norfolk and Newport News, but compared to Front Range CO, it's pretty disappointing, so harness expectations.

There is good hiking here, but more crowded closer in than it west (very possible to drive <hr and get plenty of seclusion, though). Less varied hiking, too.

The food/dining options in Charlottesville are absurdly over sold. There's some good places, but most restaurants are unremarkable, despite the local hype.

Music scene, really depends what you are into, but most nationally touring acts skip over us for DC or maybe Richmond. We do get some stops here, so I'd say enough to scratch the itch for people who like to go to a concert or three year, but if you like going on a regular basis more than that, you're probably going to be doing some driving unless you aren't picky

Living In Charlottesville VA | Things They Don't Tell You

I've collected some fun facts about Charlottesville that you may not have already known! Whether you've lived here for multiple years or you're new to town, here are some things they don't tell you about living in Charlottesville, Virginia. Now you have some great trivia questions for your guests!