Weekend in DC

Earlier this week, Matt told me it was a crime not to get out of town for a three-day weekend. Of course, my life is being synchronized by the growth of cells in lab, so I couldn't commit to anything until about Friday. We booked a place near The Mall, I did my Saturday morning "tuck in the cells" and away we went. DC is only about 4 hours from here, and through that lovely rolling hills and traces of trees that I think of as very Americana.

We arrived Saturday afternoon with time to walk around and see the major monuments at The Mall, including The Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials, the Capitol Building, the White house, the 'new' WWII Memorial, the Vietnam War Memorial and the 'new' monument to the signors of the constitution (it's a lake). Matt managed to take these photos so that is doesn't appear that there were millions of people from all over the world clamoring to see these things- but there were! We heard so many languages. It was really cool to think of people coming to see and learn about our history. We called ate at an awesome South American places for dinner near our hotel- though we had our choice of nationalities.

Next day, Matt wanted to see the Smithsonians. We saw, a lot of museums- the Freer Gallery, the Castle, Air and Space (Matt's Fav) and Natural History. Obviously not all in great detail- there was more than you could take in if you had all week- we were just scouting for highlights. My favorite exhibit was in the International Gallery- called Jim Henson's Fantastic World. There were sketches, and video and real Muppets! We saw Kermit, and Ernie and Bert and Fraggles. It was SO cool!

Once we'd exhausted our ability to amble through the museums, we walked around a bit. We walked into Chinatown, which was more East meets West Vibrant then say, the one in Vancouver. Bigscreens play ads and bright neons signs light up the bilingual AT&T and Quiznos. We caught dinner at the Capital City Brewing Company which had good beer.

Today we were to head back, so we thought we'd see some things on our way out of town. We'd been given a map from a Trolley company, and decided to follow their route to the National Cathedral and Embassy Row. This was both good and bag- good, the route was planned accounting for one way streets and took us to the high lights, bad, the map was not meant to be used as a navigation device and was not to scale, or too accurate. We got lost in Georgetown, but managed to find out way by dead reckoning. The timing was perfect for a stop at the Dogfish Head Alehouse- a must go for beer brains like Matt.

There are more pictures I've thrown up here. Enjoy!