Wednesday, July 6, 2011

A few months before the trip I had contacted our congressperson for tours to the White House and the Capital. At that time they confirmed the Capital at 10:00 but couldn’t confirm the White House until a couple weeks before our trip. Well, we did get reservations….at 7:30am. Ugh. We got up early and had breakfast at 6:30 at the hotel (same exact deal as New York, right down to the nasty coffee) and then tried to get a cab at 6:45. The first one came while Mark was still cleaning up after breakfast, so I gave it to two people who were ready to go. And then another one didn’t come and didn’t come and we were getting seriously worried we’d miss our tour. Mark went to ask the front desk to call one and when it came it thought it was there for these people who were waiting to go to the airport but we took it anyway. Sorry. We did make it in time for the tour, and it was cool to see the White House although we couldn’t take pictures until we were outside at the end.

Then we started walking towards the Capital. Man, that’s a long walk. Even when you get close you still have to walk all the way around to where the visitor’s entrance is. We barely made it in time. The Capital tour was interesting, I particularly liked the video at the beginning that explained how our government was supposed to work as a bunch of arguing fractious peoples. Made me feel like the stuff that’s going on now in the government was planned for and I felt a bit better about the situation. Each State also submits two statues of prominent citizens to be displayed and one of California’s is Father Junipero Serra, who our guide said “founded San Diego”. Well, I guess that’s kind of true… We had lunch in the Capital cafeteria which was fine, with a lot of choices, and then we headed back to our hotel, stopping by at our congressperson’s office to get gallery passes.

Once back at our hotel we rested and then headed out again to the National Aquarium because the kids really wanted to go to an aquarium. Uh, not worth the time or the money! Very small, the exhibits are not labeled or mislabeled and the glass is scratched and cloudy. Just a really really bad aquarium. After the aquarium we went to the Castle and watched the pretty funny orientation video with Ben Stiller. Then we headed back to the hotel for a swim, and then sloppy joes for dinner in the hotel (guess they know there’s no places to eat nearby). And off to bed, where the kids could watch their show in one room and we could watch ours in another. With a glass of wine from a bottle of wine purchased from the mini mart in the hotel. Thank you DC for your more liberal liquor laws!

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