Thursday, March 17, 2016

Washington D.C., Day 3

I'm exhausted!  We're all feeling tired, even though we have had enough sleep.  We've been walking and walking and walking.  Today might have been our longest walks.  I have blisters and we are all sunburned, but I'm not complaining about that because it looks like we are getting a foot of snow Sunday evening.

Today was our final full day in D.C. and the weather was gorgeous, 75 degrees. With the Metro being out of service today, we walked a mile to the bus stop that would take us to the zoo.  I'm not much of a bus rider, but we managed to pull the yellow rope to announce that we wanted to stop and yes, we had to backtrack one stop but we made it to the zoo, and fairly early, which was the goal to make sure we saw the pandas moving around.

The pandas were how I convinced Amelia to want to go on this trip.  She's been following the baby panda on the webcam almost since birth.

We headed straight to the pandas and spent some time watching them pace and eat bamboo.  Then we went to the bird area.  The indoor bird house was incredible.  We were alone in it, sat on a bench, and just watched all the different birds as they went about their days.  We also enjoyed the small mammal house with its wide variety of animals.  I'm not a huge fan of zoos and this one had quite a few smallish cages and not so natural looking habitats, but the bird house was fantastic, and Amelia enjoyed the pandas.  She was the only one who didn't see them at the conservation center in Chengdu, China.  She got a BeiBei panda t-shirt so she can remember this day all summer long. :)

After the zoo, we got drinks at Starbucks (Lucy and I) and 7-11 (Toby and Amelia) and waited for the bus to take us back.  Disappointingly, the bus stopped before I had planned on it stopping, so we took our first taxi to Arlington Cemetery.  It wasn't very expensive and the cab driver enjoyed giving us some history.  I'm glad we took the cab and didn't walk there because we walked forever (or what seemed like it) at the cemetery.  We got there at 1:00 and the changing of the guard happens on the hour, so we weren't going to see it until 2:00.  We saw the eternal flame and JFK and Jackie's grave and then headed up the hill to where we thought the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was, turns out we were wrong, but we did get to go in Robert E. Lee's house and see the Civil War Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.  From there we headed down the hill and back up another to the proper tomb.  We made it with 5 minutes to spare.  We watched the changing ceremony and headed back down the hill.  The children were in awe over how many gravestones there were in the cemetery, as far as the eye could see.  Amelia was in awe over the ceremony and spent the next mile or so of walking pretending to be a soldier, holding a gun, taking measured steps and 90 degree turns. I'm sure that was interesting for all who encountered her along our walk.

I decided we could walk the mile from the cemetery over the Memorial Bridge to the Lincoln Monument, which we did and then we headed to the Tidal Basin to see the monuments/memorials we didn't see the first night.  This might have been a mistake.  We did it, but it was difficult.  It was worth it though to see the impressive FDR memorial and Amelia was very excited about seeing the MLK, Jr. memorial.

Then we decided to take the first taxi we saw back to the hotel.  Unfortunately we were now at the National Mall and there aren't any vehicles, so we walked all the way back to the Washington monument and then decided we could just make it to our hotel.  The girls decided this at least, when I looked back as we were hiking across a field, Toby was quite a few yards back and crying, so we made it out to Pennsylvania Ave. and took the first taxi we could get.  This was another inexpensive one because we were less than a mile away, but definitely worth it.

We did our usual couple of hours of recuperation in the hotel and then headed out for dinner.  We ended up at H&M where we bought Amelia's Easter outfit and then we had dinner at Pi Pizza, delicious.  The girls enjoyed the rocket and goat cheese pizza, while Toby had a meatball pizza.

Now we are back at the hotel.  Amelia is in bed.  Lucy and Toby are watching the food network.  We will have breakfast here in the morning and head out to the airport around 10:00.

The only things I am disappointed that we missed are the Vietnam Memorial (I'm not sure how we missed it because we must have gone right by in on Monday night) and the Jefferson Memorial, which we saw but it was just too far to walk to, and Amelia really wanted the MLK, Jr. memorial in the opposite direction.  We also didn't make it to the Renwick Gallery where I wanted to see their new installation.

I like to check things off lists, so it is slightly nagging at me, but for traveling with three children I think we saw a lot!


The baby panda was up 60 feet in a tree but there was a viewing deck at eye level.











Naked Mole-Rats

Mongoose







Amelia being a soldier




Tidal Basin


Litter

MLK, Jr.

One reason we got a taxi at the end

Rocket and Goat Cheese Pizza







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