Touring DC

If I was ever a travel agent, my company would be called something like "you will get your money's worth" agency.  Or "you will get to see every monument in DC" agency.  In other words, we do a lot and use every possible minute to see new things!  I will say this, we did have earlier evenings than usual due to being tired from waking up early and running a lot!

Our trip started at 6:00 am Friday morning, October 27.  We left early so that we could get to the MCM expo.  I like race expos and was excited to get to this one.  It was located at the Gaylord Hotel at Washington Harbor.  I was good and did not spend too much money, but I did buy a new pair of socks.  We also were able to walk around the harbor which has a lot of shops and restaurants.  And some cool statues!

         

Winston Churchill

The Awakening

This statue used to be at Hain's Point 

Inside the Gaylord

After checking in to our hotel in Crystal City, we found a good Italian restaurant within walking distance.  The Portofino Restaurant.  When you walked in, there was a stairway to their basement.  Camden spent the night speculating about the mob meeting in that basement!  The food was good, though, and the bread was fantastic! 

Saturday morning started at a reasonable hour.  Since Camden was going to have to take the metro by himself the next day, this day was used to teach him how to use the metro.  We were able to walk around the Capitol before the Museum of the Bible opened at 10.  

Botanical Gardens

Grant's Memorial

Supreme Court

 

At 10:00 we were able to enter the Bible Museum.  It was a really good museum!  It was neat to see lots of famous Bibles, but they also had cool exhibits about the Bible.  They had one exhibit that told the overall story of the Old Testament.  The story was told through sight and sound type movies and objects, and you also walked through different rooms to see this story.  We also did an extra virtual reality ride that showed us different places in DC which displayed the Bible.  We felt like we were flying over DC to see these sights.  We ended our time at this museum with an expensive museum lunch, but at least it had really good fries!  

Views from the top floor of the museum

We found the mile sign for Camden's 10K

After the Bible Museum, we hurried over to the Holocaust Museum.  We got there just in time to see it all before it closed.  This museum is an important one for all people to see, even if it isn't a fun one.  It is also one in which you want to read everything as it is all so important.  The last part of the museum is a video of holocaust survivors.  One lady talked about the death march in which they had to walk for months.  I figured if she could do that, then I couldn't complain about running for 26 miles.  

The memorial at the end of the museum

Amy found the mile 23 sign in Crystal City after dinner

It was nice to come back to a clean room!

Sunday was a day without sight-seeing!  Except for the 6-hour running tour!  We did take the metro to Chinatown for dinner though.  We picked Full Kee because they were advertised as having good dumplings.  The appetizer dumplings were ok, but the Hong Kong style dumpling soup was really good!    

After dinner, we spent the rest of the evening watching NCIS in our hotel room!  It was a relaxing evening!

Monday was our day to head home, but we had a few stops first!  First thing in the morning, we headed to the National Zoo to see the pandas before they are sent back to China.

The one other animal we saw at the zoo was a bison

The pandas were really cute!

 

Metro escalators can be very long!

After seeing the pandas, we hurried out of the zoo and went to the Washington Monument.  After several times of wanting to go in the monument, we finally had the opportunity!  And it was really nice to see the views from the top of the monument after I had run in all of those areas!

 We then hurried back to the hotel to check out and head home.  With two more stops!  We drove to the Iwo Jima Memorial to see it without the crowds.  I was able to meet a retired-not retired Marine who took our picture.  It was neat to meet him.

The last stop of the day, other than stops to get food and eat in the car, was at the Marine Museum.  I only wanted to stop to get an ornament to commemorate my race, but since the museum was really nice, we spent about 45 minutes there.  About 15 minutes of it was hearing the story of the Iwo Jima photo from a volunteer.  It was really interesting!  

That is how we packed as much as we could into our 4-day trip!  Lots of fun and good memories with a little bit of running involved!