Whirlwind Trip To The Capitol

One of my lovely sisters (the youngest one) is currently interning with NCIS in Washington D.C. so the rest of us, along with one of our aunts decided we’d best go down and visit her.  Although I’ve been to D.C. many times it’s usually in January for the March for Life.  What a difference spring makes!!  When they told me we would be heading down to visit I was hoping that our visit would coincide with the Cherry Blossom Festival (or at the very least that I’d get to see them all).  Although that didn’t quite happen (most of them were gone already) I still got to see some of them.  There were plenty of other trees in bloom and there were tulips and other flowers everywhere you turned.

We left late in the afternoon on Saturday (because of work schedules) and managed to arrive at our lovely hotel by about 10:30pm.  When I went to check in I was informed that if I was willing to sign up for their rewards program we could be upgraded to a 2-bedroom suite.  I rarely stay in hotels, but what’s a few spam emails for a room upgrade?  The 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom suite was perfect because trying to get 6 women up, dressed, and ready for the day with just one bathroom would have taken a lot longer.  After a delicious breakfast (I was actually amazed at the breakfast, although when I checked in the night before the gentleman at the front desk had warned me that people go home and tell their friends about it) we headed into the city for the day.  We started at this cool little market (Eastern Market) in the Capitol Hill district.

I had to refrain from buying this beautiful batik from a lovely Kenyan gentleman named Owino Martin (you can visit his website here) – I figured there was no point in buying one now if I might visit Kenya some day and could bring one back as a souvenir. From the market we headed to a little second-hand bookstore called Capitol Hill Books.  It has floor to ceiling books, they’re stacked everywhere, with little hand-written labels for the “sections”.  One such sign said, “To find more Austen books go to the music room and check under the radio.”  It was like a scavenger hunt J.  We had far too many book lovers in our group, so we set a strict 10-minute time limit or else we might have ended up there all day long.  We then decided to head over to her apartment and park there and walk to all the rest of our destinations.  We made short pit-stops at the Botanic Gardens, the Hirshhorn Museum, the Tidal Basin (to see my almost gone cherry blossoms), the Korean War Memorial and the new MLK Jr. Memorial too.

"Our nation honors her sons and daughters who answered
the call to defend a country they never knew and a people
they never met."

 By then we were starting to drag and needed some lunch, so we had headed to Potbelly Sandwich Works; it’s sort of like a Subway, just as tasty but with less options.  It would seem that no trip with 6 girls is complete without shopping, so we got on the metro (we had a bit of a mishap there, but we all had a good laugh over it) and headed to Georgetown to check out all the shops.  Despite all the shopping I think the only things purchased were ice cream and coffee, but hey, what good is a vacation if you don’t get to treat yourself?  With 6pm looming we had to finish our shopping, part with our local girl and get on the road heading home.  It was a crazy fast trip, but, as always, so much fun.  There’s pretty much no one in the world I’d rather travel with than those girls, because we’ve always got each other’s backs and there’s never a dull moment.

Hero (noun)

1. a man of distinguished courage or ability, admired for hisbrave deeds and noble qualities.

2. a person who, in the opinion of others, has heroic qualities or has performed a heroic act and is regardedas a model or ideal:

3.  the principal male character in a story, play, film, etc.