dc[part.thrice]

[sunday | 5.2.09 | day.three]

sunday morning was another groggy morning, but we managed to get up at a similar hour to the day before. after showering and getting ourselves ready we headed down to breakfast again. as with saturday we werent disappointed, although i think we both had a little less breakfast overall this time around. they didnt have the burritos, but there were scrambled eggs and sausage and most everything else from the day before.

after breakfast we quickly grabbed our stuff for the day, plotted out our stops and were on our way. well, no sooner did we hit the lobby door than we realized today was going to be a little different. it was lightly drizzling out and we didnt have an umbrella or ponchos or anything else to protect ourselves with. so after exchanging glances we pressed forward and made our way to the metro stop. luckily, the rain wasnt heavy and the temperate outside was moderate enough that we werent getting soaked and frozen, but we were getting damp and chilled a little, oh-well.

soon enough we were on the train and headed to our first stop, federal center s.

as we got on the escalators and slowly rose out of the depths we were a little disheartened to find that the rain hadnt magically ceased during our 15 minute subterranean reprieve. so after glancing at our maps and trying to find our bearings karen grabbed a free newsprint of some kind from a nearby dispenser and we set out in what i thought was the right direction. as i mentioned before the subway maps vs. street maps are a little difficult to rectify from scale and abstraction, so it turns out we were heading a little off course at first. soon enough though we realized my mistake, corrected and before long we were across the street from our first museum of the day - the national museum of the american indian.

id seen pictures of it at some point before so i knew what the building looked like, but it was definitely cooler in person. from what i remember the idea behind the design was a symbolic representation of the cave cities in the southwest so its got some really fun geometry. inside is a huge domed atrium space with an oculus and there are various different exhibits and gift shops on all the levels. we visited a couple of the exhibits which were pretty interesting to see, and then did a little research on my native american heritage. im some very small part potawatomi and am officially registered with the tribal rolls, and was curious to see what the national museum had on my tribe. well, sadly, they didnt have a whole lot. it took quite a bit of digging but we did find a few pages in one book in one of the bookstores that gave a brief synopsis of the tribes origins and then in one of the displays there was an actual artifact about beading, but other than that, ziltch. but i thought my parents would get a kick out what we did find, so theres a few images in the albums. thats alright though, the main center for the potawatomi is in oklahoma now and while i havent made it to see what theyve got yet, i plan to someday and im sure its much more in depth. anyway, we spent quite some time at the american indian museum - hoping it would stop raining, however, by the time we were ready to go... it hadnt.

so we headed back out into the rain and soon found a vendor with umbrellas so we bought a small one - probably should have gotten a larger one in retrospect - and huddled together as we made our way to our next stop a few blocks away, the smithsonian museum of natural history. i was really looking forward to this one because wed seen some posters of an imax film about dinosaurs that looked pretty cool and also something about a giant squid on display. so after getting ourselves thoroughly dampened and our feet thoroughly soaked after sloshing our way over, we made it inside and found ourselves in the midst of hundreds of people, a large majority of which were children who were having a good time but were definitely a little obnoxious. anyway the first thing i wanted to check on was the imax times and prices and as it turns out they were charging like 10 bucks per person and we really werent prepared to pay that price. so we decided to just see most of the exhibits instead and made our way through the museum. the first area we went through was the ocean stuff and got to see all kind of cool artifacts. they had huge lifelike models of different marine life, and a ton of real skeletons and stuff that were preserved for study. we really enjoyed ourselves and took a ton of pictures.

after the marine stuff we went on to the dinosaurs section and looked through all the fossils and skeletons of the dinosaurs they had on display - again a lot of pictures.

after the dinosaurs we went through the space exhibit and then the geological formations and saw all kinds of crazy rocks and gems and stuff. they even had rocks with hair! it was pretty crazy. the last stop we made was to see the hope diamond which was currently on display - karen REALLY liked it... hah, she wishes! after another trip through the ridiculously-over-priced gift shop we were getting hungry and had seen just about all we wanted to that day, and with the rain and all... we decided to call it a day and go find some food.

so we found the nearest subway station and headed back to the hotel to see if we could find a dining guide of some kind and figure out lunch. well... after consulting the internet and our brochures we found that not much was open on sunday in the area we were in and settled on a little deli/bakery - au bon pain - just down the block from our hotel and had a nice little lunch. they had some really great macaroni and cheese that we shared as a side and all kinds of little pastry goodies for dessert. after lunch we were both pretty exhausted and since it was already about 3pm and still raining we decided to head back to the room for a little relaxing, some tv, and a nap. well... the nap ended up being a little longer that we expected i think, and around 8 we woke up and decided to have a quick order-in dinner before calling it a night. we had a very very early morning on monday and it was going to be a loooong day, so we decided it was better get our rest. after confirming our shuttle pick up to the airport [because really who wants to change trains a dozen times at 3 in the morning?] we drifted off to sleep before getting up again at 2am and making the trip home.

as for the trip home, it went just as planned, was very uneventful, and after napping on the plane and landing back in cincy we got the truck from parking and were on our way straight to work and school. and thus, our trip [and the story] is complete. its actually been a pretty short week by comparison to our "vacation" but im looking forward to the weekend. we dont have any real plans yet for whats going to happen this weekend, but if we do anything fun or exciting ill be sure to fill you in next week.

hope you all have a fantastic weekend and a happy mother's day!

dc[part.two]

[saturday | 5.2.09 | day.two]

so we got up at about 8:30am [although quite stubbornly and with much difficulty given the night before...] and got showered and dressed and then went downstairs to the continental breakfast around 9:30am. it was actually a pretty sweet breakfast, they had just about anything you could want and the best part was the breakfast burrito fixins! i had a burrito and a bagel with some oj and diet coke while karen sampled just about everything there was, lol! i think her eyes were a little bigger than mine, but she tried everything and seemed to enjoy it all.

after breakfast we visited the little brochure kiosk in the lobby and got some free maps and then headed to the room to gather whatever items we'd need for the days excursion and then soon headed out. the short 3 block walk to the metro was nothing this time around and we were feeling much more confident as we purchased our tickets from the machine and routed our trip through various stops and train switches. maybe 15-20 minutes later we were on the escalators at judiciary square and were delivered directly to our first stop, sweet! we knew we'd be close from the map, but theyre a little abstract and difficult to gauge exact location proximity to anything, and we were lucky enough to emerge from the subway directly at the front door of the first museum on our list for the day - the national building museum. well before we went in we took a second to look at our surroundings and it turns out judiciary square is a pretty cool little plaza with some fun landscaping features and statues. at the present time there was some kind of ceremony going on in the center of the plaza but we decided to walk around the extremities in the in the tree-lined paths to check things out for a few minutes as discreetly as possible. well, as much action as was going on center-stage and the fact that the city seems pretty used to tourism, no one paid us any attention as we looked about and snapped a few pictures before heading into the museum.

so when first we entered the museum what struck us both was the grandiose of the main atrium space. this thing was effin huge! it must have been at least 5 stories high with these huge columns that went all the way up to the clerestory [er... little windows near the ceiling, in layman's...] in addition to that there was a pretty huge fountain in the middle and the width and breadth of this thing... lets just say you could have probably but a few of our house's [which is pretty huge to be honest] in this space and still have room to spare without batting an eye.

anyway, we went to the information desk to inquire about tours and whatnot and then decided to just start visiting the exhibits on our own [the next tour didnt start for an hour and a half]. the first exhibit we saw was called detour and it was about all these popular tourist spots in the norway countryside. it basically chronicled 17 or 18 spaces that were designed as lookouts or viewpoints in a video presentation and then after the video there were a series of architectural models and boards of some of the places from the video. the models were freakin sweet. as someone who has built a number of architectural models in my day i had a serious appreciation for how well built these things were and was a little enamoured with the different techniques that were used. it was a really cool first experience for the museum and i was looking forward to what was next at that point.

so the next stop was a photography exhibit by some architectural photographer that was geared towards 9/11 aftermath in the form of a juxtaposition and comparison of interrogation spaces, worship spaces, and government spaces from all the various cultural viewpoints. it was an interesting collection, although after a little while it all started to look the same and the clever ironies started to get less and less clever as you saw more of the work. but maybe i was just distracted by the random gallery attendant who took an interest in my tattoos and decided to ruin my experience by talking to me for most of the duration of my visit while i was TRYING to concentrate on the artwork. at some point i just started nodding while he was telling me stories about his cousin the marine who got in trouble all the time and was kicked out after 6 months, yadda, yadda, yadda. karen totally abandoned me while this guy chewed my ear off for 15 minutes. punk.

anyway the next exhibit we saw was about architectural detailing in different materials - stone, metal, brick, etc. and it was kinda cool, but a little boring. at this point wed already been there a good hour and i was getting antsy to see all the other million stops on our list for the day so we made a quick trip through the gift shop to see if anything jumped at us [nothing did, hah, not for those prices...] and then we made our way to the exit. so the next stop on our list was "the mall" where there are tons of museums, monuments, landmarks, memorials, and what have you. its pretty much the tourist hot spot of d.c. where the smithsonian and all the famous stuff is. well, it was either back on the subway for a couple of stops or just walk the 6 or 7 blocks over, and considering how nice the weather was out [overcast and cool - perfect for site seeing!] we decided to walk. well it was actually a nice walk and we went through some nice garden plazas and government buildings [which make up like 75% of the downtown area from what we saw, lol!] until we got to constitution ave.

at this point we were a little awestruck by the mall. at one end you could see the capital building, directly in front of us was the national art gallery, in the distance the washington monument towered over the treeline and there were a half dozen other museums within eye-shot. it was a cultural enthusiasts dream come true, haha, and being the nerds karen and i are, we were basking in all its glory. we decided to venture towards the capitol building and then around the national art gallery to its entrance to kind of get a full view of the area before going in to the art gallery. it was pretty cool seeing the capitol building, even from the distance we were at, and i was really digging the architecture of the national art gallery as well. by the time we made it around to the front of the gallery we both got distracted by these awesome triangular shards jutting through the adjacent plaza and had to investigate them further.

we took a bunch of pictures and came to find out there was actually a restaurant or something under the plaza that these shards were skylights into so we took the long way into the museum by going underground, through the restaurant to check the shards out from the inside, and then through this really freaking cool l.e.d. installation before actually arriving inside the lower level of the art gallery. and right there in front of us, a serra! awesome! this was really an enjoyable day so far! we floated around the gallery for a little while before deciding we wanted to take the tour of the sculpture garden about an hour later and decided to grab lunch at the garden pavilion before it started. so we walked over there and had a really delicious lunch at the pavilion before trying to find the tourgroup. well as it turned out we asked an official looking woman where the tour started and she was the guide so we were in the right place! and if that wasnt cool enough, it turns out we were the first people shed actually given the tour to in almost a year and we were the only ones that showed up that day, so we got a very one on one personal, and casual tour of the sculpture garden and karen got to ask all kinds of questions for a project she had in her museum studies class. it turned out to be a really fun tour and she was extremely knowledgeable of the sculptures.

by the time we finished the garden we were both starting to feel a bit tired. it was around 2:30pm at this point and we'd been on our feet for hours already, but there was still so much to see! i wanted to try and see the washington monument, the vietnam veterans memorial, and the lincoln memorial while we were in the area that day, so we got started walking - not sure if we'd make it. the first one we saw was the washington monument. it was really freakin huge and everything youd expect - although in a much less immaculate condition than you always see in pictures. up close you could see that there was some history to this thing and it had been around for some time. well, being the nerds we are, we took the opportunity to take a bunch of fun shots of karen with the monument - like you do at the leaning tower of pisa or the like - haha, it was a lot of fun.

knowing how much we still wanted to see we made our stops short for the rest of the day and tried to just get to everything as quickly as possible. so after circling the huge block that the monument was on we came across the wwII memorial and checked it out, then were on our way again towards the vietnam war memorial. eventually we arrived but it was absolutely overrun with tourists, kind of a bummer and pretty typical of the day so far - there were so many people there!, so we tried to take a few pictures before getting out of the people soup and making our way over to the lincoln memorial nearby.

well after seeing the lincoln memorial, which was pretty cool, but again CRAZY crowded, and making a quick pit stop - we were done for the day and decided it was time to head back to the hotel. well, at this point we were pretty far from any of the metro stops so we could either walk to the closest one, or about equa-distant, just walk back to the hotel - so we decided wed just suffer through and walk back. luckily we were in pretty close proximity to the white house at this point so we were going to make sure to go by it on the way to the hotel.

on our way to the white house we actually just happened past the AIA headquarters in d.c. which was kind of a cool random accident and then sure enough we saw the whitehouse. and wow, that was an experience, it was pretty cool.

we also saw an armed guard carrying what must have been a freaking grenade launcher/assault rifle/rocket launcher or something. ive never seen a gun that big in my life, he could have taken out a tank with that thing! we definitely didnt mess with him, haha!

anyway, after the white house it was only another 4 blocks to the hotel and soon we were relaxing and resting our poor feet for a while, and while we were doing that i got in contact with my friend lauren who lives in dc and i havent seen since senior year at a&m and made arrangements to go to dinner with her. well, not long after talking to her we saddled up and trekked back to the metro for another ride on the subway. this time we went down to alexandria virginia to meet up with lauren and ended up having a pretty great time with her. we had this authentic-y spanish meal with these little snack sized portioned meals [the name of them escapes me... tapas?] and a lot of catching up. it was really fun to see her again, but by the time we were done eating we were EXHAUSTED and ready for bed. lauren actually volunteered to give us a ride back to the hotel [only about 5 miles away, the area is pretty dense] and after a couple of wrong turns we eventually got home and crashed for the night.

- end of day two. and again, im out of time, sorry!! -

dc[part.one]

so when last i left you all, dear readers, we were about to embark on a little adventure. well it was quite the adventure indeed! we had a blast on our excursion but damn did it ever wear us out.

[friday | 5.1.09]

so the trip started promptly at 5 o-clock when my beautiful wife picked me up from work with the car fully loaded and anxious to get the weekend started. well the first stops we had planned were to the bank to deposit my paycheck and then to dinner somewhere for a quick bite before heading to the airport. well we decided on buffalo wild wings for dinner and i had a pretty decent blackened chicken salad. it was no where near the best ive ever had, but its definitely a wing place, and they do have good wings, so i can cut em some slack on not having the best salads ever. it satisfied my hunger and that was enough for the time being. after dinner we got on the road and 15-20 minutes later we arrived at the airport and found the long term parking lot. luckily, there was a shuttle just waiting for people when we parked, so we got right on and were at the terminal only minutes later. after a quick stop at the automated ticketing kiosk and an uneventful trip through security, we were boarding the tram to the concourse and then before we knew it we were waiting at the gate. it seems everything went pretty quickly on the way there, so we actually had to wait around for about a half an hour before we were boarding the plane and then the customary half an hour sitting on the plane before we finally took off right on time around 8:20pm.

the flight to dc was actually really short, only an hour and a half, and we arrived at the baltimore airport after some moderate turbulence but all in all an enjoyable flight. [personally, i love the turbulence, but i dont think im in the majority there...] well, when we got off the plane the fun really started. karen had gotten some very limited instructions on transportation from her cousin who lives in dc which basically said to take the shuttle to the marc station and theres a train every half an hour. well we didnt know where the shuttle was, or what marc was, lol, but soon enough we found where the shuttle was picking up and 3 or 4 stops later we were at the train station. however, the marc trains [apparently the cheaper brand] were not running every half an hour as we were expecting. in fact there werent any for the rest of the night according to the board, so we had to suck up the extra cost and got tickets for the soonest amtrack into downtown [about twice as much as the marc from what we can tell]. well by this time it was already 10:30pm after all our traveling so far, and we were pretty anxious to get to the hotel and pass out for the night. well the journey wasnt over yet. about 15 minutes later the amtrack arrived and we boarded the train, both having flashbacks of our time in europe - it had been some time since id been on a train and it brought back all kinds of memories. well we sat pretty quietly on the train and eventually we arrived at union station in downtown dc, but at this point we really had no idea what we were going to do next. it was probably 11:15pm by this time and we ventured out to the street to see what the situation was with taxis - a line about a mile long of people waiting - and then back inside to investigate a metro sign that karen thought shed seen and a trip to the atm in case we ended up having to take a taxi after all. well after doing a few circles inside the station we finally found the correct route to the metro, which until this point i had thought was a bus situation like every other metro i was accustomed to. well as we got on the escalators going down to the station i soon realized it was actually a subway system, awesome! i love subways! i dont know why, but i just really love them! anyway, we had no clue how to decipher any of the maps or ticketing machines, but luckily the guy manning the info station wasnt too busy and was able to walk us through the process and help us find the stop nearest to our hotel [only about 3 blocks away] and get us going in the right direction.

so we went down another escalator and found some benches as we waited for the next train to arrive. at this point we were both feeling much better about the rest of our journey to the hotel, however we were both sweating like pigs! it was supposed to be cool from the weather reports wed checked, but it had to have been in the 70's and we were lugging around all our luggage, so we were pretty hot and gross at this point. well anyway, i took a moment to break out the camera for the first time on the trip while we waited for the train and took some pictures of the tunnel - i was enamored with the subway, haha.

before long the train arrived, and after a quick switch at the metro central station and a few stops later we were at our destination and after a short walk were at our hotel! finally! so after checking in and trudging our exhausted bodies up to the room we finally arrived in our room, and it was only 12:30am, lol! well the room itself was awesome. this was probably the nicest hotel ive ever stayed in. it was a studio style room and had all the amenities of a really nice studio apartment - with stove, refrigerator, and dishes supplied! anyway, at this point we were both ready to pass out, but i was disgusting so i took a quick shower before getting in bed, and then before long we both drifted off in preparation for a long weekend yet to come.

and with that. um, day 1. haha, we havent even started the "vacation" part yet, hahaha! but im out of time, lunch is over and ive gotta get back to work. so... for now i'll have to leave you hanging on the story, but feel free to check out all the pictures from the trip at my web albums.

hope youre all having a great week, ill try and update more soon!