DC Quickie

Made our first trip to DC this past weekend via the bus (DC2NY, about 5 hours thanks to traffic.) The idea when we planned the trip was to go down for the National Cherry Blossom festival events, though by the time we got there, the trees were mostly peaked, and a storm had come through and taken off most of the flowers. This made it more of a quest for finding the few trees that were still blooming! Which is exactly what we set out to do after checking into the hotel.

Friday was really pleasant outside, sunny and 60's. Spent the whole afternoon just walking around the Mall green parks area. Saw all the memorials - too many to count. Really, if you think about it, DC itself is basically a giant memorial. Thai food for dinner and then back to the hotel, where we had to move rooms because the tv wasn't connected to the wall. (Honestly, wouldn't that be the first thing you check when you install a tv?)

Saturday saw a stark change in weather, cold and rainy. Cold spring rain. Figured it would be a good time to go check out the Natural History Museum at the Smithsonian. Thing is, that's what everyone else was thinking. So, so crowded, I started getting dizzy when we entered the main hall. And with all the kids coming in from cold rain, I'm surprised we didn't catch anything from the cough cough cough in there. Anyway, cool exhibits with some cool illustrations made for some cooler photographs. After that we were a bit burned out on museums for the day, and spent the rest of the day walking around town, watched a bit of cable tv in the hotel room. Just felt good to relax. There's only so much you can go out for in cold rain anyway.

Sunday was sunny / cold, made for a good walk around the block and trip to the zoo. And what a nice zoo, for free! In contrast to the lazy pandas we saw in San Diego, these blokes were all munchy munchy on their bamboo, pretty awesome. Also, had no idea that the maned wolf, which looks more like a fox, can pee urine that smells like a skunk sprayed the area... but surely it does. The capybaras and komodo dragons were also neat to see, each impressive in their own right. Also: cool / strange critters at the Invertabrate Exhibit, a dark room of sea creatures and insects, made for some good videos.

One other observation: the DC Metro subway is a freaking space gateway. The stations, which are so freaking far underground, felt way more out of this worldly than anything I've seen otherwise and were more reminiscent of Space Mountain. Seriously, space warp. And those escalators, man, we spent more time on them than actually waiting for a train at the platform.

And finally, here's a quick photo album for the event [facebook].