---

So, the internet is really, really great.... for bringing together people with similar interests who might be separated by thousands of miles. I never suspected that when I bought my amazon kindle I would end up making friends in all kinds of far flung places. One of those is Mike, who lives in OKC, but who travels to DC periodically for work. So, since he was heading there, and I needed to use some PLB, we set up a meeting with kindle users in the DC area.

I hate flying, so I took the train from Penn Station to Union Station. Even more fun is traveling in the quiet car, where people are all in their own little worlds and cell phones are turned off.

Got to Union Station and Mike and I staked out some tables in the food court waiting for the others to arrive. We had a nice bunch, me, Mike, Ann, Betsy, Geoffthomas, Susan, Heather and her 4 kids. We hung out there for a while then Susan and Mike walked me to my hotel and then Susan was kind enough to play chauffeur for us. We got a bit turned around (ending up in Virginia briefly), but eventually we made our way to the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial. I was quite impressed with the sculpture there and the unfinished quality of it fit well with the quote on the side "out of a mountain of despair, a stone of hope." We wandered over to the FDR memorial for a bit, and then hiked back to where Susan had parked. We were all hungry, but figured that trying to find someplace quiet in DC on a Friday night was hard, so we drove to Arlington. Had a nice noodle dinner then hung out at Starbucks for a bit. Susan drove Mike back to his hotel, then drove me back to DC. We had a bit of a traffic jam getting back, which was due to an Occupy street protest. Watching the news later, I saw that someone had gotten hit by a car at the protest, so that probably made the drive worse.

Saturday I slept in a bit, then headed out towards Chinatown and then to the National Portrait Gallery/American Art Museum. Spent about 90 minutes, enjoying the building (stained glass ceiling and floor tiles) as much as the artwork (presidential portraits and an incredible version of the Preamble done in vanity license plates). Hiked over to the WWII memorial, passing the still closed Washington Memorial. The WWII Memorial is a large open space, with an oval fountain in it, surrounded by 56 columns etched with states/territories names and with metal wreaths on either side. There is also a reflecting pool there, with one star for each 100 people who were killed in the war. That was the nicest part of the memorial for me.

I needed some more flower pictures, so after looking around the WWII memorial, I wandered back over to the Botanical Gardens. Along the way, I passed a small rose garden which still had some flowers in bloom. The Botanical Gardens is already gearing up for their holiday exhibits, so one area was closed, but there were miniatures of buildings/monuments on the mall on display. They were really nice, and very detailed, down to versions of Jefferson and Lincoln in their respective memorials. After running down my camera battery at the garden (and discovering that my other battery was also exhausted), I walked back to Union Station and had dinner at Pizzeria Uno. Nice time in the quiet car back up to NYC and home by 11 pm!

A short trip, but a fun one.

---