(The first post on our trip is below this one.)
So Sunday morning the plan was to try and get to the National Zoo as soon as we could, so we could see the Giant Panda's while they were awake. A. went out and got our breakfast while I was getting ready so that saved us a lot of time, but we still had a long Metro ride (with a transfer) and longish walk from the stop to the zoo so it was around 10am by the time we got there. Luckily for us the panda's were awake and eating. The daddy panda was the most sociable, sitting out and eating bamboo in an area that lots of people could see him. We took a ton of photos of him. The mama panda was hiding behind some bushes so we barely got a look at her. The baby (I think it's 18 months old now) was in a separate area and spent most of the time we watched hidden (but we could hear it) but came out once or twice for a quick viewing. We spent a long time with the pandas since that was really our main reason for going to the zoo. Z. was very happy to have seen them.
Next we spent time in the bird house, another favorite with Z. From there we stopped and had a quick lunch before heading on to the Amazonia exhibit. Z. wanted to see this because recently in a geography/persuasive argument project she did in school her group had picked the Amazon Jungle as the "Best Place on Earth" (this was based on being dropped down into a place pre-civilization). We also were trying to pick some things that we didn't have in our own zoo as there was no way we were going to see the whole zoo that day as we had to leave by 2pm to get to the Kennedy Center for a concert at 3pm. We stopped for some gelato and rested (the whole walk back from Amazonia to the entrance to the zoo is uphill. Then Z. wanted to go into the Invertebrate house, so we spent a while in there. We kept walking up the hill and got to the entrance at about 2, so hoped we'd make it to the concert (we were just guessing on time as we had no idea really).
We walked another longish walk to the Metro, transferred trains (with a long wait at the transfer) and when we finally got out of the Metro stop at Foggy Bottom walked right onto the Kennedy Center shuttle bus. Yeah, such good timing! We got there with enough time to use the restrooms and get into our seats with a minute or two to breathe before the show started. We have had a subscription to the Family Orchestra concerts at home for years and had to miss the first one in the series on Saturday because of our trip. So when searching around the internet for things going on in DC for that weekend I found that the National Symphony Orchestra had a family concert that weekend too. I'd never been to the Kennedy Center (A. had been once, but not for the orchestra) nor seen the NSO, so we figured why not. We all enjoyed the concert (it had a couple mime's playing aliens from space who came in and out throughout the concert, the music was mostly modern American, some Copeland and the last song was the theme to the movie ET), which is only an hour. Z. got a free pencil as we left which said "I went to a concert of the National Symphony Orchestra" or something like that.
So back on the shuttle to go back to Metro and back to the hotel. We were meeting some friends for the evening. This is someone from a mom's list online that I've been on since I was pregnant with Z. We have met this family a number of times over the years, but never on their home turf. Their daughter MZ is basically Z.'s age (a few months younger since Z. was the first one on the list to be born, 11 weeks prematurely). They get along great (they both are avid Pokemon fans) and A. and I really enjoy both the mom M. and dad F's company.
We went out for dinner first which gave everyone a chance to talk and catch up a bit. After dinner we got into their van and they drove us into DC to the Lincoln Memorial. I had wanted to take a bus tour of the monuments at night while we were there but after realizing that they were really long (2 1/2 or 3 1/2 hours) decided against it, feeling that we'd be way too tired at night to deal with that. So they offered to bring us to some of the memorials instead. The Lincoln Memorial is really beautiful at night. From there we were also able to see the Washington Monument (which we had seen during the day on the Mall). We also saw the WWII monument while driving around. We drove by the Jefferson but it was dark, some problem with the lighting that night I think. We spent a fair amount of time at the Lincoln, including going downstairs into the small exhibition space that I didn't know existed.
They offered to bring us to some other monuments if we liked but I was happy with having seen the Lincoln (which I had really wanted Z. to see also). We had promised the girls that they could go swimming at the hotel so I wanted to get back in time for them to do that. So back to the hotel where the girls got into their suits and we hung out on the lounge chairs talking while they swam. They closed the pool at 11pm. so we got directions to their house for the next day and went our separate ways.
Monday we slept a bit later (not a whole lot, but enough to make it feel like we did) and got ourselves packed up. We took a long walk to The Corner Bakery (via the underground hallways) for breakfast. It was okay, I was kind of disappointed that it wasn't better though. After breakfast we went back to our room and got our stuff together and checked out and then drove to our friend's house in Falls Church, VA.
We had never been to their house, although I had seen some pictures as they had done a big addition a few years back. The girls immediately went off to Pokemon land (MZ probably has more Pokemon stuff than Z., which is no easy feat!). They also played on the WiiFit and took a walk along a creek. A. and I got the tour of the house and the backyard. F. was making Frito pie for lunch (yum!) which is a dish we've had in New Mexico. It's Fritos on the bottom with meat chili and cheese on top. The girls had sandwiches instead. We had a real nice time visiting with them and left to drive home somewhere around 2pm.
So, that's our trip! It was a nice combination of tourist stuff and friend visiting stuff. Z. really enjoyed both! We've been wanting to make this trip for the last three years and I'm really glad that we finally did it. I think we'll be doing it again as it's really pretty easy and there is so much to do there and we barely scratched the surface.
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