Last Saturday I left for Washington DC. My nephew is graduating from 8th grade this spring so we took a celebration trip. The weather was gorgeous, it couldn't have been any better.
When I arrived Saturday, I met up with my cousin Alison at her family's home in Georgetown. They have lived there for 20 years so I've been there a few times before but I was super nervous about driving around DC. But, I found it without a problem. She and I went together to Union Station to pick up the rest of my family. I'm thankful she drove...I never would have found it by myself!
That evening we ordered dinner from a great little restaurant called Surfside and took it up to Ali's boyfriend's rooftop deck to eat. This was our view:
On Sunday, we started our day at the International Spy Museum which was kind of overwhelming. You could have spent an entire day there if you read every exhibit. By 1pm we were all starving so we finished the museum really fast and grabbed lunch. From our lunch place, we kept seeing signs for the White House so we figured we would just walk down to it. Well, it wasn't as easy to find as we thought but eventually we ended up here:
Our next stop was Ford's Theatre. This was one of my favorite things we did. We toured the museum, theatre, and the house where Lincoln died. Here's the presidents box where Lincoln was shot:
At this point, we were really tired of sightseeing but Emily and I still had our smiles!
We decided that we would walk back to the hotel rather than take public transportation...it didn't seem that far. Yea right. We were all exhausted and complaining our feet hurt by the time we arrived at the Westin. We learned our lesson. That night we went to my family's house for pizza (sadly I don't have a picture...but the pizza was really good.)
The next day, Monday, we went to Devon's favorite attraction- the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. We arrived there around 10am and I don't think we left until around 2:30. Emily and I were ready to roll out of there around 11am...but Devon liked it, so that's what matters. Here was my favorite thing we saw there:
Next we met up with my Aunt Fran and went over to the Smithsonian American History Museum. This one was far more interesting to me than the Natural History Museum but we only stayed here for about 1.5 hours. But, we hit the highlights. We did find that there was one exhibit all about Ipswich MA! That was so cool to us because that's where my parents live. Ipswich has the most historical homes of any town in America so to exhibit highlighted a few of them.
That night we ate at a great restaurant in Georgetown called Mai Thai. It was delicious!
Ok, so Tuesday started our with a walking tour of the city. We walked from my family's house, along the Potomac River, by the Kennedy Center and Watergate and ended up here:
This is the Lincoln Memorial if you aren't familiar with Washington DC! Something cool happened while we were there. The Discovery space shuttle was being delivered to the Air and Space Museum and circled overhead at 1500 feet. Apparently it was a pretty historic moment that we witnessed!
Later that day we made our way over to the National Zoo. This was my favorite of the animals:
Later that evening was one of the highlights of the trip for me. We went to Sprinkles Cupcakes, the original cupcakery. If you watch the show Cupcake Wars, the judge Candace Nelson is the founder of Sprinkles. I was actually surprised by how tiny the shop was. The cupcakes were good but I'm not sure they were worth $3.50 each! Crazy. But, we saw gas for $5.49/gallon so I guess that's just DC for ya.
The next morning, after a lovely breakfast, I hit the road back to NC. It's always so sad to leave my family after spending extended time with them but I'm already looking forward to our trip next year!
