We did actually make it to Washington DC for Friday and Saturday last week, for those of you who were wondering!
I peeled off a couple of representative photos to give you the flavor of our getaway. On Friday we got down to our hotel about noon. It was the Holiday Inn Capital Washington, right in the middle of things and only 2 blocks from the Air & Space Museum - honestly it was a lucky guess on my part after surfing over dozens of worthy hotels. The rate was good considering that it was still the Annual Cherry Blossom Festival in DC.
After checking in early (very flexible folks at this hotel - a plus) we uncorked the bicycles and hit the National Mall. This was our 9-month old's first time on a bike, and she seemed to like it. Or perhaps she was just zonked from the car trip...
We rode down past the Washington Monument to the WW2 monument, then decided to head around the east side of the Tidal Basin to the Jefferson Memorial. This took longer than it sounds, with endless street crossings. I'm sort of surprised that the city allows so much traffic to pass through this sensitive area - pollution, chances of accidents with tourists, etc. The place was packed with Cherry Blossom Spectators, but we got through OK with our bikes. Susan wanted a photo of us, so we asked some folks to help out with that (I'll suppress the wife photos out of deference to her).
After continuing around the Jefferson Memorial we headed up the Potomac to the Lincoln Memorial, and Carys was asleep again.
The Vietnam Memorial was the most moving, in my opinion. People were forced by the design to walk the entire length of the memorial - it is hard to avoid all those names.
We realized at that point that it was after 7pm! The day was awesome - not cloudy as expected. We rode back to the hotel and flopped into bed.
I was up at 6:15 and decided to take my camera out onto the Mall to grab what I could of a Washington sunrise over the US Capitol. How'd I do?
I also got a cool photo of the facade of the Museum of The American Indian:
After a good breakfast back at the hotel, the boys and I walked back out to the now-busy Capitol steps to see the parade of tourists and class trips. After lunch the whole clan spent the afternoon at the Air & Space Museum - one of our stated goals for Saturday.
We closed the place around 6pm and grabbed a nice dinner at the grill at the hotel before hitting the road. We were home by 10pm. A good use of less than 48 hours, if I do say so myself...
Back to business!
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