DC Trip Day 8

Today we went to the  National Zoo! We got there fairly early in the morning but it was so packed! There were people everywhere and so many families and kids running around. We walked around for a while but it was mostly just the animals you would find in a typical zoo. We did get to see a sloth bear though. And not just any sloth bear...this was THE bear that the author of Jungle Book based the character Baloo off of! I have to say though that it was definitely lazy and relaxed. We walked around a bit more and some some birds and some elephants and pandas. Even some very playful otters.

Panda Bear

Some VERY curled up flamingos

Curious otter

 After we had our fill of crowds and crowds of people, we went to the Washington National Cathedral. The cathedral turned out to be absolutely amazing! The architecture was beautiful and amazing to see. The whole cathedral is actually built in the Gothic style which is extremely rare for a cathedral. Apparently only a few cathedrals in the world are built entirely in one style. We were able to go up in one of the towers and you could see out across most of DC. It was really pretty.

National Cathedral

Stained Glass

More stained glass and flags

...and more stained glass and vaulted ceilings

After spending some time at the cathedral we ended up heading back to the room and eating some leftovers. Then a little while later we went down for some snacks and headed out to Georgetown for dinner. It is a beautiful little neighborhood. We walked around for a bit and then decided to have some dinner at Pizzaria Paradiso. It was really good and authentic Italian pizza (no sauce, big slices of mozzarella). It was a fun restaurant because the windows in the front all open up so it's basically like a whole outdoor seating restaurant. Another fun thing was that instead of serving bread or something like that as a snack before your entree arrives, they served us a bowl of olives. All different kinds and they had the pits still and everything. We filled our bellies then we headed back to the room for bed.

DC Trip Day 7

Today is the day that we went to Arlington. We spent quite a bit of time out there just walking around and taking it all in. We started out by looking at the Kennedy Graves. It was a very large slab with a single flame and four plaques. It was neat, mostly because it was a President of the United States. Then we headed down to the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. While we were there we were actually able to see the changing of the guard. That was really neat. It was so perfect and clean and precise.

Changing of the Guard

After the changing of the guard, we walked around some more and saw a huge amphitheater where they hold various things like for the funerals of the unknown soldiers. Across from the amphitheater, was the mast from the USS Maine along with a small memorial there. Next to that were rows and rows of tombstones. They stretched in all directions as far as the eye could see. Some had names, some didn't, some just said "four unknown". It was crazy to see how many unknown headstones there were.

We kept walking around and came across Robert E. Lee's house. It was a beautiful plantation house and was quite large for its time. The house also had some great views, but it was sad to see that he and his family were "forced" out of their home during the civil war. On the property also lies a huge tomb of 2111 unknown soldiers that President Lincoln buried there in the middle of the night (which is actually how Arlington became a cemetery).

The tomb of the 2111 unknown

We continued to walk through the cemetery and came across the grave of the first person to ever be buried there. The date said that it was from the 1700s! Then we walked to the Iwo Jima statue. I was expecting it to be some smaller statue but it turned out to be huge!

Iwo Jima Statue

After our visit through Arlington, we hopped back on the metro and went back into DC. We thought it would be fun to visit Chesapeake Bay so we headed that way. We came up to the huge fish market and we really wanted to get something, but then we quickly realized that we had no way to cook it back at the B&B so we decided against that.

We wondered for a little bit more and then went back to the B&B. We were just in time for another evening snack. Tonight it was taquitos and cookies! We were still hungry after our snack and we kept thinking about the delicious dinner at Lauriol's the night before so we went back there for dinner again.

After delicious dinner number two, we came back to our room and watched Back to the Future parts 2 and 3. I forgot all about those movies, but it was a fun night just hanging out in our room.

DC Trip Day 6

Today we planned on having a pretty easy going day. We got some breakfast and then headed down to the Washington Monument to see if we could get tickets to go up inside of it. I figured that all of the tickets would be gone but we were able to get some of the last ones for 4:00 that afternoon.

With tickets in hand, we headed to the National Gallery of Art West Building. This has all of your classic artwork and there were thousands of pieces. Room after room of different art pieces by all sorts of people I didn't recognize. It was pretty crazy. After hours in the gallery, everything just started getting jumbled together and they all looked the same after a while. We were able to see a few famous pieces though including one by Da Vinci. It is actually the only work by Da Vinci in the United States! His painting style was unlike any of the other painters. It was incredibly detailed and so well done. It was also painted on boards and the back of the piece was actually painted as well. Down on the bottom floor of the gallery was a sculpture gallery. That was neat to see and we got to look at things like Degas dancers and the Thinker by Rodin.

Statue of Mercury

After we finished there, we still had some time before going up in the Washington Monument so we thought that we would see the aquarium. When we got to the building though and saw the price of the tickets, we figured we would just go to the one back home in Newport. This one looked like it was probably not worth the cost they were asking. Once we decided this, we headed over to the Vietnam War Memorial to check that out. It was so huge and there were so many names on there. It was crazy to think that most of those people were no older than I was. It was hard to watch people just run through there and appear to have no respect for what this wall represents.

Next we wondered back over to the Lincoln Memorial in the day time. It was just as full of people as it was the other night! This place never gets a break. Then we walked down along the reflecting pool and ended up sitting at the WWII memorial for a while.

Then the time came to go up in the Washington Monument. I was really iffy about going because everything I read said that it was over 800 stairs to the top. I don't really like going up and down stairs that  much and even debated waiting at the bottom while Rich went up and back down. I eventually talked myself into it thinking that I would possibly not get this chance again and it would be pretty cool to be at the top of the Washington Monument. So our group got called and we walk in to the base of the building and I'm pleasantly surprised to see that there is an elevator and no stairs to be seen! I was so excited and Rich was pretty bummed. He was really looking forward to the stairs. We got to the top and you could see so far in all directions. There were two large windows on each side of the obelisk and of course all sorts of people crammed in there to see out. We waited our turn and it was great!

North - White House and lawns

South - Jefferson Memorial and government buildings

East - Capital Building and Mall

West - Lincoln Memorial, Reflecting Pool, Pentagon, Arlington

 It was so fun to see all of DC (and then some) from 500 feet up in the air! It was a pretty quick elevator ride back down to the bottom but it made a few "stops" along the way. Really, it was just a slowing down part where the walls would become transparent and you could see the inside of the obelisk. Some of the stones that were used to make the monument were carved and decorated in some way. There were stones donated from all of the states and even some cities and foreign countries too!

We got back to the B&B just in time for some more chicken wings and apple pie. It was just as good as the day before! We hung out in our room for a bit and then headed out to find something for dinner. Tonight we decided to head up to the northwest instead of going to the southeast. It turns out we found a packed out restaurant and we waited for just over an hour for a table. There were over 350 people there and they said it was packed out like that every night. At that point, we knew we made a good choice. It was a TexMex restaurant called Lauriol Plaza and it was by far the best food we had in DC. The wait was all the way up to two hours or more by the time we were seated and people were plenty happy to wait that long. Mmmm....I can still remember how great it tastes! We eventually found our way back to the B&B and just went to sleep.

DC Trip Day 5

So on to day 5...
We headed back to the Museum of Natural History this morning and almost had the whole hall of dinosaurs to ourselves! It was great!

DC's very own Rexy

Triceratops - also known a Sarah from Land Before Time :)

After the dinosaurs we went to a hall that was full of other animals of all kinds. There were lions and tigers and bears (oh my!) and giraffes and zebras and pretty much every other kind of animal you could think of. There was even a GIANT squid. It was kind of gross though.

Zebras, Giraffe, Hippo

I went to take a picture of this panther and the way it turned out looks like it might actually be stalking towards you and ready to attack!

We finished up at the Museum of Natural History and decided that we should head next door to the American History Museum. I didn't think that this one would be as fun as the natural history one, but to my pleasant surprise, it turned out to probably be my favorite museum of all!

The American History Museum has so much history in it. There was everything from trains to marble statues to  instruments to Julia Child's Kitchen to Kermit the frog and everything in between! We were able to see Lincoln's top hat from the night that he was assassinated at the Ford's Theater. The hat looks pretty old and worn but it sure does seem to say "Lincoln" doesn't it?

THE Top hat

George Washington's Outfit

This was the outfit that actually belonged to and was worn by President George Washington. This is supposed to be the outfit that he is said to have worn when he was "getting his picture taken." Look back at some paintings of George Washington and you will see him wearing this! It was neat to see it with everything so intact. There was another whole room dedicated to the First Lady's and it had quite a few of the dresses worn by various First Lady's.

Kermit the Frog here

This area of the museum was considered to be the pop culture part. It had things like Kermit the Frog and Dorothy's Ruby Red Slippers that she wore in the Wizard of Oz and there were also some costumes from the Broadway musical The Lion King. They were so well done and well made, it was really cool to see them so close. This is also where we saw Fonzie's jacket from Happy Days and Archie Bunker's chair from All In The Family. Down the hall a ways, we saw Julia Child's Kitchen. It was perfectly set up just like she had it set up complete with cookbooks and pans hanging on a peg board. We were also able to see ORIGINAL Star Spangled Banner. It was in a pretty dark room and no pictures were allowed. It was so old and worn out that they had to have it in a dark room to keep it from deteriorating much more. There were large chunks missing from it which we learned were because the people who used to have it would cut little pieces from it and give them away as souvenirs. The flag was originally 42 feet long and now it sits at 34 feet long.

After looking through the rest of the museum we headed back to the B&B to rest for a bit before getting some dinner. When we got back, the owner had put out some chicken wings and apple pie. It was SO delicious! After our quick snack, we headed up to our room and watched the Apprentice, mostly because it is filmed in NYC and we were just there days ago! It was fun to see some of the places we had walked around. We ended up just eating some leftovers for dinner and had a good evening staying in.

DC Trip: Day 4

Well...
I see it has almost been yet another year since I last updated. We've been doing some really fun things recently but I will have to wait to blog about those. I still need to finish up our DC trip and last years vacation before I can post about this years!

Sorry for not keeping up to date on this lately, I guess things have gotten busier than I expected, but I will try really hard to get this going again. Sometimes I forget that not everyone that likes to see this blog isn't already on facebook looking at all the pictures all the time.

Back to DC...
On day 4 of our trip we were so worn out from our looooong day just hours before. We ate a good breakfast and then we were off to the Museum of Natural History. I was looking forward to this one because I kept thinking about Night at the Museum which also took place at the Museum of Natural history, only it was the one in NYC. There were so many things to look at here and we quickly realized that we would probably be spending more than one day here. After we figured that out we really just took our time walking around and looking at all sorts of things. We started in the Gem room. There were gems in all shapes and sizes and meteorites that looked really funny.

Moon Rock!

We even got to see the Hope Diamond

...and some other pretty jewelery

Next we went to the butterfly gardens. There were so many butterflies (about 300) and there were all different sizes and colors. One butterfly came and landed on my ponytail. I could actually feel it's little feet moving on my head and it felt really funny. Then another one kept floating around the corner of Rich's glasses. It really couldn't decided if it wanted to land or not, and then found some plant to land on instead.

After spending a lot of time there, we headed around to see some stuff on western culture. There were a lot of Greek pots and vases and some mosaics. there were also some ancient scrolls that had stories on them about farmers and oxen and such, but they were all written in Hebrew it looked like.

Ancient Greek Pot

After we got through the top floor we decided to take a quick walk around the first floor and then come back the next morning for better pictures and when there were less people.

When we left the museum we headed up north to get some dinner. We wound up going to the Hard Rock Cafe and saw Michael Jackson's Beat It jacket. The funny thing is, it was so small, I think I could have worn it and it may have even been a bit tight on me! Pretty cool to see though.

After dinner we just headed back to our B&B and just relaxed for the rest of the evening. It was such a nice, restful day.