Washington, D.C.

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Let me start by saying that 4:00am starts to the day are not my thing. We ended up at the airport with plenty of time to spare, and went through security in what seemed like ten seconds (best experience ever).

Julianne met us at the Ronald Reagan airport and helped us navigate to the Metro and into the city, but we had about 4 hours to kill before we could check into our Ho-Partment (we rented an apartment/hotel which they call an Apartel, but we decided we like HoPartment better), so we decided to get lunch and see the White House.

Sweet Green was on our list of vegan friendly restaurants in the city, and this salad place was excellent (mine even had wild rice in it!). Usually when I'm on vacation, I don't like to visit or eat at the same places more than once, but I'd definitely eat here again if the opportunity presented itself this week.

Because I was sleep deprived, hot, sweaty, and had been wearing a backpack and lugging a wheely suitcase around the city for the past hour, I just didn't fully appreciate seeing the home of our President. Jason started geeking out, got a picture standing in front of it, and immediately updated his Facebook profile pic. I was sitting on the curb waiting for the novelty to wear off so we could go across the street and lie down in the cool grass when two police officers walked by with a yellow lab. The dog started sniffing me and my bag, and I stupidly assumed he was smelling the cats from our house, and I reached out and pet the dog - and immediately got scolded. Hello! I am sitting in front of the freakin White House with a backpack and a giant suitcase - he's smelling for bombs and things because I could be a crazy person. How dumb; but hey, I'm not a crazy person because that thought didn't even cross my mind until after.

After we checked in to our HoPartment and got settled in for the week, we jumped back on the Metro and met Julianne for dinner at Farmers Fishers Bakers on the river. I had an amazing vegan meatloaf, a superb server, and we somehow ended up with free beer flights.

Yesterday, we ventured over to Capitol Hill and saw the Capitol Building, the Supreme Court, the Library of Congress, and the National Museum of the American Indian. We actually missed our tour of the Capitol due to poor planning and bad luck, but we got over it quickly. I surprisingly really enjoyed the Supreme Court visit even though none of this government-y stuff is really my thing. (Jason is a Political Science major and really has a great appreciation and understanding of all things governmental and political, whereas I barely passed most of the social studies subjects in general and tend to glaze over when the mere mention of this stuff.) The architecture of these buildings is quite amazing, and the Supreme Court had a little theater which showed a short video on the history of the system, the building itself, as well as some great interviews with several of the Justices explaining the process they go through for cases. Not knowing what to expect from any of these buildings, the Library of Congress was neat in that it wasn't an actual library (though there was a recreation of Thomas Jefferson's personal library), but a museum with exhibits. The most interesting of the couple I ventured through, in my opinion, was the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Last night, Julianne hosted a dinner party with some of her roommates and local friends. I've never been involved in such interesting conversation before - admittedly some of which was well over my head. These college kids are serious brains with serious interests in things well outside my knowledge-base, let alone expertise. At one point, I had to tell the guy sitting next to me that some of his sentences were so long I would get lost in the middle and have no idea what he was talking about.

Our legs and feet are so sore today, we decided to stay 'in' and hang out at the pool instead of more walking around the city. We still have 3 more days, and this is a vacation after all - some R&R is expected. 😊

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Photos

Jason in front of the White House
Let the geeking out commence!

The Capitol Building
Under construction

The Great Hall
Inside the Supreme Court

Comments

[Sue Meier]

This is great - thanks Jess!!
oh how fun to hear details of your trip. I could NEVER get that from my son. :-) Glad you are having a great time... Looking for more details :-)