Caught In The Whirlwind
Posts tagged washington dc trip
Progressive Roadtrip Report – Day 0
May 23rd 2008
The day I thought would never get here has arrived…it's the day before we leave for Washington DC.
I'm in major packing mode at the moment, trying to get everything that I have to do before we leave done after days of waiting just doing nothing.
I've got two lists running now…stuff I need to do and stuff I need to pack. The major items on the need to do list include getting the GPS set up, picking up some shampoo and attempting to find my sunscreen, as well as calling the hotel to inquire about checking in at 2 instead of 3 because I believe I requested 2pm on my initial reservation anyway. Just want to confirm with the actual hotel people.
Busy busy! Next time I post I should have some neat picture type things from Day 1.
Slowest. Week. Ever.
May 20th 2008
It's hard to believe it, but the trip down to Washington DC with Wassy is now less than a week away. It really did sneak up on me with all the goings on of the other concert and the meet and greet thing concealing it's approach. But now it's less than a week away which officially makes this the slowest week ever.
It doesn't help that I've already done most of the trip prep that I was going to do for the DC show last week for the trip out to Albany. So right now I'm just waiting for the end of the week when I can start packing. I'm making lists of stuff I need to take (I'm the resident holder of all items electronical pretty much on this trip. We're sharing my laptop, I'm taking my iPod for the drive down, phone, PSP, camera, and the gps…all of which require charger cables/cradles/storage space. And I have to make sure I don't forget to take the tickets. That would be…bad.
Our basic plan at this point is to drive down on Saturday, get settled into the hotel room and then head out to the national zoo I think for a little wandering around before heading back to the hotel to eat at their restaurant there (which was quite good from the last time we were out there). Sunday we plan on wandering around the national gallery of art for a while, maybe doing something else in there potentially…hard to say right now though. We're going to go eat at The Dancing Crab that night which was really cool last time we were out, so hopefully it'll be just as cool this time around too. Concert on Monday, so we'll probably be wandering around the mall area a bit taking in the sights and grabbing some food. Then we head home on Tuesday. Should be a really fun time.
The one last preparation item that I have to do that doesn't have to wait until Friday to take care of is getting my car's first scheduled maintenance done. And I dropped it off at the shop last night so hopefully by noon or so everything will be all…maintained.
The slowest week ever continues!
QotD: Danger Is My Middle Name
Apr 27th 2007
When was the last time you did something dangerous?
Submitted by Ross.
Easy…got in a car with my friend Jay driving it a couple weeks ago. Scary!
Seriously, I'm not exactly the danger loving type. The term "coward" might be applied possibly.
I mean, the most remotely dangerous thing that I can think of doing was taking a stroll through the streets of Washington DC at 8-9PM to go see the capitol building at night. That and taking the metro during rush hour. And honstely, both of those have the danger level of a possible stubbed toe or tripping on the sidewalk.
Oooh…I live on the edge!
Quit laughing!
QotD: Many Happy Returns
Apr 15th 2007
What are you going to do with your tax return?
Submitted by KB.
I already used it:
No! I didn't buy a monument…I went to Washington DC on vacation.
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Vox Hunt: Is For The Birds
Apr 9th 2007
Show us some birds.
Here's a couple of bird pictures from the trip to the national zoo in Washington, DC
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Washington DC Trip – Day 4 and 5
Mar 22nd 2007
Day 4 was a low activity day for us. After feeling like we were going to die from all of the walking the night before, we decided to cut back on the planned activities. We dumped Mt. Vernon, the interactive science museum and the aquarium. I was looking forward to the aquarium the most out of all of them, but I'd rather make sure that we did the zoo.
It was a good decision, since we spent the entire afternoon at the zoo. It was (thankfully) a shortish walk away from the metro stop.
There's not really a heck of a lot I can say about activities here since it was mostly just looking at animals. Memorable creatures included the Maned Wolf, which as we learned, has very, very strong smelling urine which they apparently use to communicate.
We saw a lot of birds as well, especially of the common variety. Squirrels and ducks showed up in force, including where they were least wanted…in a crane's water hole. We saw one crane that looked rather annoyed that they were there.
We also saw an Emu that I could have swore was showing off for the camera. It enjoyed hanging out by the fence with all the people there, striking bird like poses and basking in all of the attention.
One of the more active animals we came across was the Red Panda. This little guy was running and jumping all over the place which was semi surprising since the red panda's at the local zoo just tend to sit there and do nothing.
They had Giant Pandas as well, but I was unable get a really good shot of one because of how far away from the fence they liked to hang out.
Unfortunately, my camera battery died about halfway through the zoo, so I wasn't able to get as many pictures as I would have liked. I was so tired from all the walking that when we got back to the hotel room the past two nights, I forgot to charge it. It's got a pretty good battery life otherwise though, as I found out.
Another camera hiccup…it seemed to enjoy focusing on the cages the animals were in and not on the animals themselves. So I ended up getting an awful lot of pictures of wires and bars with fuzzy animals in the background. Oh well…I know for next time.
Lunch was at the zoo. A little over eight dollars for a Mcdonalds style burger and small fries. I suppose it was going to fund animal conservation though, so that's all right. I bought a little stuffed penguin at the panda gift shop even though they don't have penguins at the zoo (figure that one out) and was teased by my friends for collecting "dolls". Everybody has a hobby! There's nothing wrong with it! NOTHING!
Dinner on Day 4 ended up being at the hotel restaurant which ended up being really, really good for a pretty decent price. After that, it was bedtime since we were leaving pretty early the next day in order for me to be back for the second round Syracuse NIT mens basketball game I wanted to see Monday night.
Cut to the next morning we were all feeling pretty blah. We pack up, and go to load up the car. Tragedy strikes…we left the dome light in the back on when we were unpacking…4 days ago. The battery was dead and the maintenance guys with the jumper cables and battery stuff weren't going to get in for another 20 minutes. We waited back in the hotel lobby. Eventually they arrived, but they weren't the brightest group of people in the universe and it took them about an hour and a half to figure out that they needed to bring their truck around and jump start it that way.
Finally we left and after an almost stop-free ride back home, my friends dropped me off at my parents house and then we left immediatley for the game.
Vacation…complete.
For more day 4 pictures, you can check my flickr account. Click here!
Vox Hunt: Weekend Results
Mar 21st 2007
Show us something you did, made, saw or bought this past weekend.
I went to the National Zoo in Washington, DC and took a picture of some Flamingos
Washington DC Trip – Day 3
Mar 21st 2007
I'm really really behind with these writeups because of how exhausted and busy I've been the past couple days…so here's day 3 a couple days late. Day 4 should be up later today.
Day 3 of vacation was re-arranged slightly to account for the fact that we didn't make the Natural History Museum the day before. Jason's (not me…my friend) legs were hurting quite a bit today from all the walking. Mine weren't doing very well either as several blisters had begun to formed on my right foot making walking very painful.
We started out by just barely making it to the International Spy Museum because the Metro was delayed slightly. The museum itself was really cool. To start off they take you up this elevator which gives the impression you're signing up for a school for spies. They told us to pick a cover story from one of 16 located on the walls and memorize the details and then took us into a briefing room to show an introductory video.
At this point it kinda fell down a bit. A lot of the exhibits were fairly interactive, but after that cool start it dropped back down to a fairly normal museum experience with exhibits and things behind glass and such. That's not to say they didn't have a lot of cool things to look at, but it would have been awesome if they carried through their narrative experience through the entire museum.
Unfortunately, no pictures were allowed inside the museum,so I can't show you the cool stuff. I want an umbrella shotgun and a handgun hidden inside of a pipe.
After a slow trek through the museum, we decided to head back to the hotel for a little while to rest our poor, poor feet. On our way back to the hotel, we took a detour to a Safeway that I found near one of the metro stops. What the map didn't mention was that it was a little over a quarter mile uphill. I grabbed every blister bandage I could find as well as some stuff for lunch since we were going to eat in our rooms.
After an hour or two of rest, Two of us (Jason stayed back at the hotel, due to not feeling well) walked out to the Natural History Museum so we could see a whole bunch of dead things. We took a lot of frequent breaks and made good use of all of the benches there.
They had a very well done Orchid special exhibit set up inside which we walked through. I snapped a bunch of pictures of stuff inside there. It was a long room, designed such that it almost looked like it was actually outside.
After the orchids, we moved into fossil town and checked out the dinosaurs. This was the first dinosaur exhibit I've been to since I was a little kid. The dino's were considerably less scary than they were back then.
Then we entered the non dinosaur dead stuff part of the exhibit which houses the mythical Giant Land Sloth. I'd been looking forward to seeing this monster for quite some time after hearing Wassy discuss it. She's a bit scared of it after seeing it the first time she was at the museum and after having some nightmares about it. Obviously, I wanted to see this monster for myself.
Well…it was actually big. I didn't see it as all that scary, but then again, I wasn't the one that had nightmares about it. It was bigger than I thought it would be. Makes me wonder what, exactly, caused them to go extinct and die off.
After going through the fossilized portion of the museum, we went upstairs to check out some of the human history exhibits. My favorites come out of the Egyptian/ancient civilization sections. I've always been interested in ancient Egypt for some reason, so seeing a real live mummy (sort of) was fairly cool.
The Mummy was named after the person who donated it. I'm not entirely sure if I'd like to have a mummy named after me…seems kinda morbid. I'm not sure where the lion mosaic came from, however, the workmanship that must have gone into that is stunning.
Finally, we entered the mineral exhibit with the intent to see the Hope Diamond, which we did. It was smaller than I expected it to be, but still impressive. It's extremely clear and has a nice color to it which you probably can't see in my picture due to the lighting.
At this point, my legs were about to give out on me again, so I requested that we head back to the hotel a little early for some rest before going to Olive Garden that night for dinner.
Olive Garden, simply put…was a disaster. First we got off at the wrong metro stop and had to wait about 20 minutes for another train to roll through…then when we got to the right one, it was a HUGE walk from the station through this stupidly winding sidewalk because the pedestrian bridge was closed. Then the service was TERRIBLE. The absolute worst service I've ever had anywhere. It's best that we try and pretend that this dinner didn't happen.
Based on how everybody was feeling, we made the decision to sleep in on Sunday and skip Mt. Vernon. We also had to drop plans of going to a science museum and had the aquarium on the chopping block if we didn't have time as well.
More picture from day 3 can be seen on my flickr account. Click Here!
Washington DC Trip – Day 2
Mar 18th 2007
I'm a little slow in posting this one because of how tired I was the last couple nights, but…here's what went down on day 2 of the Washington DC Trip.
After the extensive walking of day 1, my feet were killing me and I could feel a couple of blisters forming, but I was generally ok. Day 2 was the Smithsonian day where we planned to visit the Air and Space Museum, the National Gallery of Art and the Natural History Museum.
Unfortunately, the weather was still horrible. Rain and wind earlier, turning into sleet and snow later on. By the time we got to the Air and Space Museum, we were soaked.
First thing on the agenda was to get some tickets for the 12:50 showing of Magnificent Desolation, a 3D IMAX film detailing the Apollo moon landings. After that, we went exploring for a while.
One of the highlights for me was seeing SpaceShipOne hanging in the museum atrium. Back when the X Prize was going on, I was following their progress with real interest since I'm of the opinion that commercial space flight is going to be the way to go in the future in order to innovate in the space travel department. NASA hasn't had the budget to do anything radically different since the Space Shuttle was first created.
One thing I learned that surprised me was that pigeons used to be used as spy plane like devices. Strap a camera on them with a timer and let em fly. I'm not entirely sure how useful this one. I'd guess they'd get an awful lot of pictures of statues and trash cans. Wassy brought up the question about what would happen during mating season…which is something I'd rather not think about.
Then we turned a corner and found a model of the strangest flying machine I've ever seen in my entire life. The thing on the left here is a French designed flying ship that was never actually built, probably for very good reason. There's a barrel hanging below the main ship which contains the food and drinks, accessible only by taking a rope ladder from te deck of the ship all the way down to the barrel. Why the heck did they not stick the barrel INSIDE the ship?!? The kitchen is also hanging down by the barrel.
There's a little "flying machine" on the back, I guess in case somebody wants to take a drive.
One of the coolest parts of the museum though, was the pop culture exhibit. The American History Museum was being renovated but they moved the pop culture stuff from there to the Air and Space Museum. They had a ton of cool stuff there. Highlights included Kermit the Frog from the Muppet Show, Dorthy's ruby slippers from the Wizard of Oz, R2-D2 and C-3PO…
I could go on, but I think I'll just throw some pictures down.
After that, we went through the National Art Gallery. I'm not really an art type guy, so I don't have any pictures or very much to say about this portion. Some cool looking things in there, but my legs were killing me too much to really appreciate it. The Da Vinci panting that Wassy wanted to see was removed for maintenance on the enclosure, unfortunetly. We called off the Art Gallery early in order to go back to the hotel and rest.
We skipped the natural history museum and went out to dinner at Chili's which was really good. After that we went back out to the Capitol Building to take a few pictures since we missed it on Day 1.
That's all until I post what happened on day 3.
More pictures from day 2 can be found on my flickr account by clicking here.
Washington DC Trip – Day 1
Mar 16th 2007
Whew, I'm exhausted…and I've already had a chance to sleep. I did way more walking than I think I've ever done in one day yesterday.
It started out with me getting up at 5am in order to get ready to leave at quarter to six. All went according to plan, my friends arrived and off we went. First stop…dunkin donuts for some coffee, or in my case, white hot chocolate. We had a loooong stop there as the employees at the drive through forgot what we ordered…three times.
After that, we were on our way. Things were fairly uneventful as far as major events until we ended up in a small mining town in Pennsylvania in search of a gas station. We sent Jason in to pay for the gas since this was an old school, non pay at the pump station here. He later said that he felt so out of place in that store. After we got the gas and some lunch at Arby's, we got back on the road.
Then we got to the fun part…the beltway and beyond. The traffic was pretty heavy from the moment we entered Maryland until we got into Arlington. The beltway itself wasn't bad, although we weren't in the inner loop thankfully. Then we took the scenic George Washington Parkway into Arlington where our hotel is. There was one small hitch at this point:
GPS: Drive 0.5 miles and then enter roundabout.
Wassy: (Who was driving) Wait a minute…did it just say what I think it said? I didn't know there was going to be a roundabout! Ahhhh!!
Then later, as we were entering the roundabout… "Oh no, a roundabout! AHHHHHH!! … Oooh, this is senic … ARRRGHHH!"
We survived to get to the hotel though, where I'm proud to say I had one of the rare moments where I argued a point with somebody. I went to check in to the hotel and the person at the front desk said that we weren't going to be able to get rooms on the same floor. Well…that wasn't going to work out…we reserved the rooms in January and specifically requested connecting rooms if possible and next to each other if not. So after discussing a little bit, It eventually moved to rooms on the same floor to rooms that are right next to each other. Wheee!
We went out exploring after settling into our rooms. First off was my first metro/subway experience which wasn't that bad. The DC Metro system is pretty nice. We had a little problem with directions and we got lost a couple times to start off with, but we eventually found our way to The White House. I was amazed at how close you could actually get to the building, considering all of the security concerns and such. The only thing that was blocked off was Pennsylvania Ave to outside traffic. Otherwise a tourist could walk right up to the black fence and snap a picture.
It should be noted here that we saw our only cherry blossoms of the trip so far, across the street from the white house. The picture I took of them was really, really good, so I'm going to put it in here using the jumbo size option that Vox just added
Ok, after the White House, we ended up walking through the Vietnam War Veterans Memorial. Which, to me, was extremely eerie. There were a TON of names on that wall and although I didn't have a personal connection (that I'm aware of) with anybody who died, it was still chilling seeing all of the names.
After that, we swung past the Lincoln Memorial. When we were at The White House, we remarked that it looked a lot smaller than we thought it would be. Well…the Lincoln Memorial made up for that, as it was a lot bigger than we anticipated.
The reflecting pool wasn't doing much reflecting, unfortunately. I guess it was drained for winter. In any case, the Lincoln Memorial was very cool.
Then we stumbled onto the Korean War Veterans Memorial which I didn't know existed until we were forced down the path by closed sidewalks. It was fairly interesting, although it didn't have the same impact on me that the Vietnam memorial had.
Here's where things started sucking a little bit. It was threatening rain all day and right around 5pm, the skies opened up and we had some pretty heavy (cold) rain and lots of wind, which is really not a good combination when you're walking around a major city. We decided to trek on to the Tidal Basin to see the
Jefferson Memorial, however, by the time we got there, we decided to call it quits without seeing any more of the monument type stuff due to the crappy weather. The lighting in the Jefferson Memorial wasn't the best, so I didn't get too many good pictures of it. Oh well… Then we had the metro ride from HELL. We had to make it from the city into a residential area in the middle of rush hour. I don't like large crowds, and this was about as large as it gets.
We went back to the hotel for about 15-20 minutes, long enough for me to take a shower and change into some dry clothes considering we were soaked to the bone. Dinner that night was seafood at The Dancing Crab in Washington, DC. I must say…I was a little worried about this particular dinner choice since I'm not fond of seafood at all. However, my friends got me to try the salmon which I thought was pretty good. And Wassy, the crab smashing master gave me a little taste of crab meat which was really quite good. Takes too much work to get the meat out.
The dinner went amazingly well, considering the previous days activities, but we were all tired, so we went back to the hotel room and slept.
Today…the Smithsonian!
You can see more pictures of the trip over on my flickr account. Click here!
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