Washington DC Trip, 2014 - Day 2

Buckle up, this is gonna be a long one.

Day 2 of our trip started early, as Mariah was up at 6 am, and the kids and I got going a little while after that. Despite this early start, we didn't actually arrive at the Smithsonian National Zoo until 9 am, due to a long wait for a morning Metro train to arrive, a long ride on the train, and then almost a mile walk from the Metro station to the zoo. But arrive we did, and my fears that the crowds would already be huge on such a beautiful, sunny day were, gladly, unfounded.

We decided to try to see the Pandas first, as we'd read that the lines to see them get big early. Sure enough, almost everyone who was in the park was over in the Panda section, and for good reason as the baby panda was out in full view and putting on a show playing in a tree near the fence. Both kids were able to get a good view, despite the crowd. Emma was especially excited to see the pandas, because, as she was quick to remind us, she is in the "Panda" class at daycare.

Next, we saw the cheetahs (or at least their heads, just barely poking up on the other side of a hill) and the zebras (one of Emma's favorites), and then got a good look at the elephants. The kids thought it was fascinating to watch the elephant pull up grass with its trunk and then eat it, and they got an equally big kick out an exhibit that showed the volume of food an elephant can consume in a day, along with how much it poops back out (hint: it's a lot)!

By now it was a bit past 11, so we decided to have an early lunch and grabbed some hot dogs and chips from a nearby stand. It was a welcome break after a being on our feet and moving all morning.

We then took a trip through the small mammal house, which had a ton of fun little fuzzy critters, and then off to see the great apes. The gorillas seemed determined not to cooperate with us at first, as every time we moved into a good position to see them, they would move on the other side of a bush or rock, and the kids were quickly losing interest. Eventually we found a good spot though and we got to see three gorillas, including a young one and a large male silverback.

A Golden Lion Tamarin	Bonnie, the orangutan, doing some people watching.
This young gorilla was getting a snack by banging on this yellow wheel... thingie.	Like a lot of other animals we saw at the zoo, this silverback gorilla was determined to only show us his butt.

After the gorillas and orangutans, it was a short walk over to the reptile house. Ben and Emma ran back and forth through the halls calling out for everyone to come and see each new creature they discovered. We saw some amazing snakes, lizards, frogs, turtles, and even a few alligators. Ben's favorite was a huge green anaconda. It was hard to tell how long it was since it was all curled up, but its body was easily as thick as my leg. Emma also turned out to be a bit of a snake charmer, as she had great fun in touching the glass of one of the snake habitats and then watching as they followed her finger back and forth.

Finally, we headed over to see the big cats. Unlike the cheetahs, the lions and tigers were out in the open and easy to see. Ben and Emma were excited to see them so close, and had a great time watching the lions pace around and one of the tiger cubs playing with a pillow.

By now, the kids were getting really tired. Even though there were a few animals we hadn't seen, we knew that we had reached our limit for the day, and Mariah and I were still hoping to see a little of the Air & Space Museum that afternoon.

Emma was begging to ride the carousel she had seen near the big cat area. We offered to get her a stuffed panda from the gift shop instead, something that she had been wanting very badly earlier and that we thought would be a more "lasting" reminder of the trip for her, but she would not be dissuaded. "I have enough stuffed animals, I think. I want to ride the merry-go-round!" she would say. Ben, on the other hand, had no interest in riding the carousel, and was more than happy to pick out a toy snake from the gift shop while Emma and Mariah waited in the line for the ride.

In the end, I'm glad Emma stuck to her guns, because the smile on her face when she climbed onto the hummingbird she wanted to ride, said that this experience will mean far more to her than any stuffed panda would.

Now we had a dilemma. We were near the east side of the park, and if we took the exit closest to us, the way we had come in that morning, it was a mile long walk back to the yellow line and up a very steep hill on Harvard St the whole way. If we wanted to catch the closer Red line at the Woodley Park - Zoo station, we had to walk back through the entire zoo, uphill the whole way! Ugh.

We decided to go with the closer Red line train, even though that meant transferring to another train down the line. Once we dragged the kids back through the zoo, with a few rest stops along the way, it ended up being a nice stroll down Connecticut Ave. The Mariott near that Metro station had some amazing flowers blooming, that we stopped to look at.

We then boarded our train, and man it was PACKED! We couldn't even move 3 feet past where the doors on the train were, so it was more standing until we reached our stop (except for the kids, who were too tired to stand, so they sat on our feet instead).

We got off a few stops later at the Metro Center station and transferred over to the Orange line, which we rode to L'Enfant Plaza. From there it was a short walk to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. Before we went inside though, Mariah decided that we needed to recharge a little bit, so we picked up some ice cream from one of the vendors on the street. We found a shady spot outside of the museum entrance and savored the rest and the cool treat.

After finishing our snack, we headed inside and got treated to a big "Woooah" from the kids upon seeing all of the massive rockets and planes that fill the huge building. We knew that there was no way we would have time to see even half of the things there are to see there, but we meandered around to try to give the children a good overview of the place without torturing them too much.

 

Tired as they were, they had a blast looking at all of the rockets, planes, satellites, the lunar lander, and on and on.

Finally, at about 5:30 we decided to call it a day and head back to the hotel. We stopped for dinner at a Ruby Tuesday's near our hotel and then, at long last, we were able to get back to our room and collapse on the beds.

The kids stayed up for another hour or so watching the movie "Epic" on TV, and then it was lights out for them and us around 9 pm. Two days down, only one left to go.

Washington DC Trip, 2014 - Day 1

Mariah and I decided that it was high time that we took the kids to see some of the sights in our nation's capitol. We knew that a single day wouldn't be enough time to see all the things we wanted to see, so we planned out a 3 day weekend trip.

We left at 7:25 in the morning on Friday, April 25th, and made it to the Staples Mill Amtrak station just in time to board our 8 o'clock train. The train started a little late, but we were soon on our way, and the kids were super excited. They were very impressed by the train and had their faces pressed up against the window watching the scenery roll by. After a while, both of them decided to listen to their music players for a bit, but continued watching out the windows and had a lot of fun pointing out interesting bits of scenery or when another train would speed past.

Of all the things on and about the train that impressed Emma, the highlight of the trip for her had to be the bathroom. When it was time to go, I took her, and she could not stop talking about how cool the bathroom was. "Wow, Daddy! This is SOOO cool! Look at this little sink! Look at this potty!" Too funny.

We arrived in Alexandria around 10:30 am and walked over to the Kings Cross Metro station to head one stop South to our hotel. It was a short walk from there to our Holiday Inn, which was simple, but nice. After checking in and dropping off our stuff, we headed back to the Metro and took the Yellow line up to the Archive station. The kids were enthralled and were practically bouncing out of their seats as they counted each station we stopped at. Ben was enamored with the bright blue lights on the side of the tracks and would call them out each time we passed one.

After reaching our destination it was a few short blocks to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. We decided to start on the ground floor and let the kids into the rotunda, where they were suitably impressed by the massive African elephant that dominates the room.

We decided to head to the hall of mammals first, and we were all blown away by the impressive collection of animals on display. Ben and Emma were like pinballs, bouncing back and forth from display to display, calling out all of the animals that they recognized and gawking at some of the more interesting specimens that they had never heard of before.

Ben is taking a picture here, not playing a game!

 

Next it was on to the Fossils section, where the full size T-Rex skeleton made the kids' jaws drop, literally!

The kids' reaction when they saw...

...THIS!

They both loved examining all of the dinosaur bones, but the place was predictably super crowded, so we made our way quickly through to some of the less famous fossils. The kids were just as impressed by the wooly mammoth and giant ground sloth though, and so was I.

Look at the size of this sloth!
It's almost as big as the mammoth!

 

Emma said this huge dinosaur femur would make a good pillow.

By the time we finished off the fossils, it was well past 1 o'clock. We briefly perused the exhibit on ocean animals, where the giant squid was a hit, and then headed back downstairs for a very expensive lunch in the museum cafe. It was a welcome break as we were all starting to get tired and needed a few minutes to recharge.

After lunch we got back to it and headed upstairs to check out the gems and minerals. The kids were bored at first, as the section we first entered just seemed to have some fairly plain looking rocks, but once I explained that these were meteors from outer space they lit right up and their imaginations were going again.

We browsed through the wing fairly quickly and Ben and Emma both enjoyed seeing all of the crazy types or crystals and rock formations they had.

I am always blown away myself by the staggering variety of colors, shapes, and textures that are possible with these different minerals. It was hard not to take a picture of everything I came across as each seemed more beautiful than the last.

We finally made our way to the true gemstones, and the Hope Diamond, which the kids had been asking about every since we first mentioned it to them weeks ago.

By this time both of the children were running on fumes, especially Emma, but we soldiered on and looked at the skeletons, mummies and insects. Ben and Emma both held a big green caterpillar in the insect section and were delighted at how it tickled their hands.

We finished our visit at the gift shop, and left at around 4:30 pm. A big storm was on it's way and we hurried to the Metro, hoping to beat it back to hotel. The Metro was, unsurprisingly, very crowded with rush hour traffic, but we managed to find some seats for the kids and Mariah and I stood.

It was raining by the time we reached our station, but we had packed our umbrellas and managed not to get too wet as we walked back to the hotel. The kids watched TV for an hour while Mariah and I rested a little. It was time to eat, but still raining, so we had dinner in the hotel restaurant, which unfortunately wasn't very good.

Then it was back up to the room and time to get ready for bed, where we discovered that I had forgotten to back Ben's pajamas! Whoops! Mariah let him wear one of her night shirts, which he had fun dancing around in. We read some quick bedtime stories and then it was lights out.

It's now 10 pm and everyone is asleep but me, typing out my notes of the day's events on the iPad. More adventures to come tomorrow...