3 Days in the Capital

For those of you who haven't given up on this blog completely - I'm back! I just returned to Cambridge from a very quick trip to DC. My mom was able to fly over to meet me and we had a great time seeing all of the famous DC sites.

The trip got off to a bit of a rocky start when I arrived at my hotel, jet-lagged, and was told that they had no reservation for me. I made arrangements to stay somewhere else for the night and was contacted by the original hotel the next day to inform me that they had made a mistake in my booking and would like to apologize by upgrading the remainder of my stay to a suite. Score!...almost made the stress of the first night worth it!


I had to do a little work while I was there. While I was busy with that, my mom got adventurous and took a tour of the capital which, after hearing about it, I am jealous that I had to miss! Once I was done working, we set off to do some more exploring. Our first stop was the White House:


Here's Jo straining for to see if she can spot the First Dog, Bo...


No luck.

Next it was a quick pass by the Washington Monument:


Before continuing on past the nearly dried up reflecting pool to the Lincoln memorial.


Neither of us are big museum fans, but we figured that no trip to DC would be complete without a visit to one of the Smithsonian museums. My mom was particularly excited about a live butterfly exhibit she'd heard about at the Natural History Museum, so I decided to humor her and go along. Having now seen it, I have to admit that she was right - it was really neat!

The monarch butterflies we saw had just hatched that day:


Here are some that are only a few hours old, as well as one (the darker colored "chryasalis") that hasn't hatched yet:


We also saw an all black butterfly:


Several with really pretty colors and designs on their wings:



And this one, which looked more like a moth when it wasn't flying, but had the most beautiful blue wings when it was in flight. You can just make out the amazing blue if you look in between its wings:



As an added bonus, we also discovered that the Natural History Museum is home to the Hope Diamond - a beautiful 45.52 carat blue diamond. It's hard to get a perspective on the size from these pictures, but it would fit comfortably in the palm of your hand. It also looks a lot bluer in the pictures than it actually was.



After hitting many of the DC tourist destinations, we also checked out some of the lesser known sites. One included a stroll through Georgetown where we spotted this famous cupcake shop:


Seeing the line out the door just for cupcakes, we decided we better see what all of the fuss was about. Inside, they had a dizzying array to choose from including Chocolate², Chocolate³ (Terry, I thought of you!), Red Velvet, Carrot...the list went on and on. I went for the Chocolate Hazelnut which was pretty good. In the end, it was just a cupcake, albeit a good one, but probably not worth the $3.03 I paid for it... It's all about the experience though, right?


Another really fun stop was Eastern Market. It was a great indoor/outdoor market full of all kinds of foods and crafts. In a way, it reminded me of a smaller version of Pike Place. There was also an interesting flea market where we met these crazy ladies:



Jo became fast friends with them:


Finally, we hit China Town for dinner (where, incidentally, we had Mexican food...). It seemed to be one of the most happening places we visited in all of DC. While we waited for our table, we walked around a bit more and enjoyed these extremely talented "drummers":


You wouldn't believe what they were able to do with a couple of buckets and the flattened trash can lid you can just make out attached to the side of the shopping cart.

A great trip made perfect by good company and beautiful weather!