Trip to Washington DC

Gary and I went to DC this weekend. It was a lot of fun, but it was certainly a lot of walking. My feet seem to have recuperated though.

We left Thursday morning and headed straight to the National Zoo when we got there. They have a baby panda that was adorable. He's several months old now and weighs about 50 lbs, but still really cute. Towards the end of our day it began to rain and a lot of the animals had sought shelter. It was a nice zoo though. We stopped for Chinese on the way back to the hotel.

Friday we hit a couple of the Smithsonian museums and then we did a Segway Tour, by recommendation of Liz and Daniel. That took us by the Capitol, the White House, Lincoln Memorial, Vietnam Memorial, and Korean Memorial, among other things. It was a pretty cool tour. Afterwards, we got some dinner and then walked around a bit as it was getting dark. We saw the Supreme Court, the Library of Congress and got closer to the Capitol.

Saturday, my feet really needed a rest, so we tried to do a little less walking... we drove to Mount Vernon. On the way back we went to Georgetown for dinner and then actually saw a movie (again resting the feet).

Sunday we explored Arlington cemetery. We bought tickets for a play for Sunday evening before we left Dallas. We made some dinner reservations nearby and then headed over to the play which was at the Warner Theater. The play turned out to be quite an experience. Among the patrons we were by far the minority - I believe I counted 5 other white folks like us. :-) It turned out to be quite a cultural experience. The audience was very boisterous. They were dancing in their seats during some of the songs and at one point the lead actress actually said, "I'm going to need you to be quiet while I'm doing my lines". That was pretty funny. The play had it's moments. There were some quite funny parts.

Finally on Monday, we went back to hit more of the Smithsonian museums. We only made it to one, but it was a good one (American History).

Overall, the trip was a lot of fun and very full. The hotel was nice and was less than a block to the subway station, so we traveled by subway most of the time. Our one experience driving was to Mount Vernon and then back through Georgetown. We soon found out why everyone told us not to try to drive in DC. :-)