Washington DC trip: Friday

For anyone who doesn't know our friend, Tom, he is a "go, go, go" kind of guy. Vacations are no different as far as Tom's concerned. He had us up and showering a little after 6am on Friday. As soon as we were ready and fed, we headed to DC.

It was a 4-hour drive from Raleigh, and we made a pit-stop at Tom's favorite restaurant, McDonald's, for lunch. We parked our car near our hotel and took the metro train the last 20 miles into downtown DC. The timing was perfect! We parked the car, got our tickets, and stepped onto the train right before it left :)

Upon arriving in DC, we headed to the National Air and Space Museum. It was filled with tons of planes, space craft, and information about these things. We all touched a moon rock (photo to right is of Tom touching the moon rock)!

After seeing all of the sights at the Air and Space Museum, we decided to go visit Tom's state representative's office to pick up some tickets he had requested. We walked past the US Capitol Building on our way - it is beautiful!

We all felt a little intimidated inside the building where our representatives' offices are. It's a very quiet building and we had to go through security (just like we had to everywhere in Washington DC). We found the North Carolina office and, like the sign said, just walked in! The front desk guy was very nice, but we didn't get to see Tom's representative or anyone else "important" while we were there ;)

Next up was a completely unplanned trip to the US Botanic Garden. There were plants there from all over the world, from tropical ferns to cacti. There were also plenty of fragrant flowers in bloom (yes!).

By this time, we were all starving! We started heading in the general direction of the Lincoln Memorial, looking for food. We weren't coming up with much, so we finally settled on a place that looked a bit more expensive than we had hoped. The food was good, but the service was mediocre.

After dinner, we continued on. We decided that since we were close, we'd do a quick walk-by of the White House. On the way, we found awesome ice cream and a bunch of restaurants that looked much more like what we had hoped to eat at. Doesn't that figure?!

Ok, where to go from here...the White House adventure really deserves it's own post, so I think I'm going to blog about that separately. You'll have to wait!

After the White House adventure, we stopped by the Washington Memorial. We didn't go in, just saw the outside - very impressive. Our last stop for the evening was the Lincoln Memorial. That was awesome! It has amazing architecture and just looks majestic, especially after dark. The statue of Lincoln is huge! They also had the entire Gettysburg Address on one wall. It was very moving to read.

Exhausted, we found our train and headed to the hotel. I wore my pedometer and we walked over 21,000 steps on Friday! That's a new record for me while wearing the pedometer. It's good exercise walking around Washington DC :)