Our Vacation (part 1)

Friday after work we headed out and stopped in Rocky Mount, NC. This was only for overnight but we did make a Wal-Mart run to pick up a few things.

Saturday we arrived at our hotel in Maryland around 3:30pm. It would have been sooner however traffic had other ideas.
That night we took the metrorail down to the Smithsonian and saw a few minutes of the National Book Festival. It was raining so we walked around a bit and then headed back to the hotel.

Sunday we slept in and then left to go to National Stadium for the Baseball game between Atlanta Braves and the Washington Nationals. We had great seats, up high and front row. Our Braves won!!!!!! YEAH!!!!
Afterwards we took the Metro back down to the Mall. The metro stops in the middle of "The Mall" so we walked down to the Washington Memorial and then on down to the WWII Memorial and then on down to the Lincoln Memorial.
It was a beautiful afternoon and turned into a beautiful evening. We took alots of pictures.
When we arrived at the Lincoln Memorial there was some filming going on. I recognized the actors immdeiately. It was Bill Paxton (Bill) and Chloe Sevigny (Nicky). There was a third actor, Nicky's daughter, however, I'm not sure of her name. It was fun watching the filming and we were able to get a few pictures also. Afterwards we hiked back toward the Metro. We stopped by the Washington Memorial again and a lady on a bike rode by and said "you just missed your president". I wasn't 100% sure what she said and just noded. A few minutes later she came back and said "you did hear he was here, right?" I then figured out that I had heard her correctly and said No. She said he'd just left as we got up to the top. (She'd been just ahead of us getting up to the top of the walkway. ) Wow.. we just missed seeing President Obama by mear minutes!!!!!
The rest of the treck back to the Metro wasn't very eventful.

Monday we spent the day at the National Zoo. Part of the day was very frustrating as they were doing renivations on several of the exibits. The bears were sleeping inside and others just weren't out at all. But what we did see was great. The renivations will be awesome. The Elephant house will be amazing and HUGE!!! State of the art for sure.
The metro station for the zoo is about half a mile from the zoo.. all UP HILL. The zoo itself is on a hill.. by the time we were back at the hotel our legs were killing us. But it was a great day.

Tuesday we started in on the Smithsonian exibits. We started at "the Castle", this is an informational stop but has a few exibits in it and a short video. In the very middle of the entrance is a display of the trasure that you see in the Night at the Mesume 2. It was fun to walk around it and see what all you could identify. There was Archie Bunkers chair sitting at the top of the heap, a computer keyboard, a light bright box, and alot of other fun items.
Next came the Mesuem of Natual History. This building is huge. It took us 3 hours to do about 2/3 of it. And that was passing up alot of things. Here we got to see the Hope Diamond. WOW.. this thing is beautiful. We also saw dinasours and other fossels. A giant female squid and other various under the sea creatures. Next came the Mesume of American History. This was what I was waiting for.. I'd been reading about Julia Childs donating her kitchen to the Smithsonian and was very extcited to see it. It's pretty cool. Very very very originized. She sure knew how to keep a perfect kitchen. We also saw the real Archie Bunker chair, Dorothy's ruby slippers, Kermit the Frog and R2D2. We took about 3 hours here. We did stop for lunch on the ground floor. Talk about expensive!!!!!!!!!! But it was good. Afterwards we came back to the hotel to rest up for tomorrows adventures. So stay tuned in a day or two for part 2 :)