We went to Washington, DC last week, Thursday through Tuesday.  Someday,
perhaps, I'll get our pictures on-line.

Six of us drove in our aged minivan, which has broken outside door
handles for both front doors.  You have to get someone to go through the
sliding door in the back and open the front doors from inside in order
to get into the front seat.  This is about as much fun as it sounds like.

Dramatis Persona:
Me
My wife, Lisa
Her daughter Anabel, 16
Her son Zach, 14
Her daughter Jennifer, 11
My son John, 11

Also, there's enough play in the steering wheel that the van drifts a
lot.  That caused us to exclude Anabel from helping with the driving.  I
have got to get that fixed some day.

So we drove to Washington, DC on Thursday; my wife and I, four kids, our
luggage, and what we hoped would be enough food to get us by for most of
our trip.  We stopped at roadside stops and ate sandwiches from our
provisions on the way down there.

In case you are wondering, 6 people eat a lot of sandwiches over a 9 our
trip.

Following our Mapquest directions, we got to the DC area, then got
miserably lost a couple of times.  That only wasted an hour or so, and
we finally arrived at our hotel, the Residence Inn by Marriot, Fair
Lakes, in Fairfax, VA.

The hotel room was very good.  It was a two bedroom suite.  Each bedroom
had it's own bathroom, and a queen sized bed.  The living room had a
sleeper sofa, and also had a gas fireplace.  There was a kitchen with a
full sized refrigerator, a two burner stove, a microwave, dishes for
four, pots and pans and silverware and basic cooking utensils.  There
was a dishwasher but it was broken.  No worries; the hotel staff did the
dishes anyway and so we didn't need it.

We went out to eat one time at a Friendly restaurant, very much
equivalent to a Big Boy.  My credit card shows a $111 charge for that
meal.  The kitchen in our room, and the free breakfast bar, easily paid
for itself.

We just took it easy for the night.

The breakfast (free) was large, well stocked, and with plenty of
variety.  The hotel had a three kinds of juice, a waffle maker, fruit,
donuts, bagels, muffins, bread and toast, eggs, cereal, a hot pot of
oatmeal, sausage, croissants, and of course, three kinds of coffee.  It
is possible to get by on a breakfast bar like this.

After we ate, we got directions from the desk and then headed to the
nearest Metro station and after a discussion with one of their
ubiquitous and very friendly employees, we decided to buy 1 day passes
for all of us.  It cost $39 ($6.50 each, unlimited rides for the day)
but doing that each day turned out to be cheaper than buying a 1 week
pass for each of us.

We hopped on the train and had a pleasant ride into town, taking about a
half hour.

The Washington, DC Metro (http://www.wmata.com) is a spoke oriented
train system with 4 lines running to all parts of the city.  The trains
are electric, and are very clean.  They are also quiet and smooth.  We
were at the Vienna end of the Orange line, which meant there was never
any problem finding seats for all of us in the morning.

Our first destination was the Smithsonian's National Holocaust Museum. 
This was Anabel's pick for Things to See.  We rode to the Smithsonian
train station, got off the train, stumbled around befuddled about where
to go next.

THE most pleasant part of visiting Washington is that the people are
almost invariably nice, happy to answer questions, and willing to be
helpful to anyone who asks.  Someone described it as a Southern city. 
If it's typical of Southern cities, I need to spend more time in the South.

I asked someone at random to point us to the Smithsonian.  He took us to
the nearest corner, pointed our direction, told us how far to go and
where to turn.  We were close but left to our sense of direction, we'd
have probably wandered for miles before getting to the Holocaust Museum.

The National Holocaust Museum (http://www.ushmm.org) is designed to
remind you of German concentration camps.  The walls are partly
battleship grey and steel, with outlines of barbed wire.  Other walls
are stark brick.  It feels a little like being in a dreadful prison when
you enter.

To see most of the permanent exhibit, you have to get a pass; this is
intended to help prevent overcrowding.  It takes a little getting used
to; when we first went in, we couldn't go to much of the exhibit.

I started at the "Daniel's Story" exhibit, which told the story of a
young Jewish boy and the changes that affected his life in Germany as
the Nazis increasingly persecuted the Jews.  He starts off as the child
of a respected storeowner, then his life is increasingly regulated, his
family is forced into a ghetto, and then taken away to a concentration
camp and separated.  His mother and sister are killed; he and his father
survive and are rescued by Allied Forces at the end of the war after a
couple of years of forced labor and starvation.  It is very chilling and
I thought, excellent.

The permanent exhibit was very disappointing to me.  It covers 3 stories
of the museum, which is a full-sized museum dedicated to the Holocaust
and to more current problems such as Bosnian and Somalian genocide.  I
visited a Holocaust museum in Paris some years ago, which was filled
with artifacts like torture devices and gas chambers and stuff like
that.  The US Holocaust museum is similar to the one in Detroit, with
many pictures and much informative text, but not a lot else.  You could
tour the main part of the museum by Internet as easily as doing it in
person.

The museum is clearly intended as a study center as well as a visitor's
museum.  One floor had a computer room and library, and an information
desk with a couple of librarians.  I wasn't there to study, though. 
Maybe my expectations were out of line.  I think most of us were
unimpressed by this museum.

So we had lunch on the wall surrounding the Washington Monument
(http://www.nps.gov/archive/wamo/home.htm).  This is the tallest
structure in Washington DC.  You can see it from all over the city. 
Unfortunately we were not able to get tickets to go to the top.  My son
and I had done that a few years ago in our trip, and I think the rest
would have liked to do it, too.

Then we went to the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum
(http://www.nasm.si.edu).  John and I both regard this as the very best
of the Smithsonian.

If you've never been to Washington, DC, you may think of "the
Smithsonian" (http://www.si.edu/museums/) as one museum.  It's not; it
is 19 museums.  Eleven of them are on the National Mall
(http://www.nps.gov/archive/nama/home.htm), with the Washington Monument
to the end, several empty city blocks which are a park in the middle,
which is the National Mall (no, it's not a shopping mall) and then the
Smithsonian Museums across the street on both sides.  On the other end
is a status of Ulysses S. Grant, and past that is the US Capitol.

So, we walked around the Mall to get to the Air and Space Museum.

Just in case we didn't have enough to do, the Mall was hosting an ethnic
festival.  I have forgotten the name of it, but it included exhibits
from Virginia, Northern Ireland and the Mekong Delta.  We did not attend
the festival, but did smell and hear the food and music from all three.

Okay, Air and Space.  The Air and Space Museum on the National Mall has
two parts, which are airplanes, and space travel.  I homed in on the
space travel part and barely glanced at the planes.

There's a lunar lander from Apollo 11.  There's the *original* Gemini
capsule.  Wow!  You can touch a piece of moon rock.  The Apollo-Soyuz
modules from the 1970's.  A full sized model of the Hubble Space
Telescope.  Various rockets.  An exhibit showing the history of space
suits.  A model of Robert Goddard's original rocket.  I am 46.  I was 8
when Neil Armstrong took his stroll on the Moon.  Need I say more?  I
was wrapped up and overwhelmed by this part of the museum.  The wonder
is that I am not still there.

But I'm not.  We left.  Zach and Jennifer were getting pretty tired of
museum life.  We wandered to the Capitol and back, then hopped on the
train and went back to our hotel and had dinner.

The Air and Space Museum has two buildings these days.  80% of the
exhibits are in Alexandria, a few miles from the hotel where we were
staying, but my family in unison refused to let me get anywhere near the
Alexandria museum.  I'll have that to look forward to in the future, I
suppose.

I wasn't done for the day.  After dinner, Lisa and I, and Anabel and
John, headed back out.  The other two stayed at the hotel, watching TV
and going swimming.  (The hotel pool had a lifeguard so we felt it was
fine to leave them there.)

We headed back downtown and walked around the White House, the
impressive and relatively unknown Executive Office Building, and the
nearby US Treasury building which is pictured on the $10 bill.  The
ladies wanted to go to Starbucks; we walked up to a Caribou Coffee shop,
10 minutes after it closed, then up to a Starbucks, a few minutes after
it had closed.  Ah, well.  We headed back to our hotel and collapsed
into our beds for the night.

For our 2nd day, Lisa's choice of destinations was Arlington National
Cemetery (http://www.arlingtoncemetery.org/).  We went in the morning,
walked to the Tomb of the Unknowns
(http://www.arlingtoncemetery.org/visitor_information/tomb_of_the_unknowns.
html)
 and watched the precise Changing of the Guard ceremony, and then saw two
wreath-laying ceremonies.

The Tomb of the Unknowns -- originally the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier,
but it honors Marines, Airmen and Sailors as well -- has a sentinel on
guard at all times.  He's a soldier, and is always a man.  The sentinel
goes through a precise 21 step march in front of the Tomb, halts for a
precise period (with a sharp SNAP of his heels), conducts a rifle drill
which I do not know how to describe, then marches back 21 steps,
performs his drill on the other end of his station, and then repeats. 
He does this for a half hour, at which time there is a changing of the
guard ceremony and another soldier takes his place.

The precision and dedication of these sentinels is very impressive.  As
I explained to John, if you saw a speck of dust on the sentinel's shoes,
he would probably die of shame.

We walked from the Tomb past the tombs of Robert Kennedy and John F.
Kennedy.  The JFK gravesite was too far up a hill for us; we were trying
to get around to too many things, so we just walked around the pool and
on to our next destination.

This was the Marine Corps War Memorial
(http://www.nps.gov/archive/gwmp/usmc.htm), which is a statue version of
the famous flag-raising ceremony at Iwo Jima on Mount Suribachi.  Lisa
wanted to see this as well.

Then back to the Metro; we were done visiting monuments and museums for
the day.  We had lunch at our hotel and then piled into the trusty,
rusty minivan and headed for Maryland (http://www.mdisfun.org) to see
Chesapeake Bay (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesapeake_Bay).  Jennifer
wanted to see the ocean.  It would have been a several hour trip to
Virginia Beach so we settled for the Chesapeake, stopping at the first
state park with a swimming beach.  I don't know what it was called.

The 11 year olds hopped into the water and swam almost continuously for
several hours.  I stayed with them.  Lisa and Anabel walked along the
beach to take pictures of a couple of mini-lighthouses.  Zach walked
along the beach.

As dark approached, we elected to leave.  It was on our way back to the
hotel when we stopped at a very pleasant Friendly's restaurant
(http://www.friendlys.com/) and had our sole restaurant meal of the
trip.  We'd have liked to find a Maryland seafood place, but hunger
overcame our urge for an interesting dinner experience.  At $111 for
even a moderately priced dinner, we just couldn't afford to go out much.
 Anyway, Friendly's was a very enjoyable place for us all.

Sunday was our day to visit the National Zoo
(http://nationalzoo.si.edu), which was my pick for Things To Do.  We saw
the giant pandas (http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/GiantPandas).  We
saw pygmy hippos, which I had only seen once before, in Houston.  We saw
the full-sized hippos (always my favorite zoo exhibit), and saw a
delighted hippo having water sprayed into it's wide open mouth with a
hose.  We saw free-ranging Golden Lion Tamarins; they can go anywhere
they like but in reality they stick to a forested section of the zoo. 
The gorillas, also, can freely move from one section of the zoo to
another via overhanging cables placed for their use.

That evening, we returned to the city to see the massive World War II
Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial (http://www.nps.gov/linc) and the Korean
War Memorial (http://www.nps.gov/kwvm).  I had really wanted to make
sure I made it to the Lincoln Memorial.

I stepped in front of the Lincoln Memorial with our trusty 5 megapixel
HP digital camera, pointed it at the status of Lincoln, turned it on...
and watched it display a "sorry, boss, no power" message.  Arrgggh!

I hadn't realized there *was* a Korean War memorial.  We came across it
by accident, heading back toward the Washington Memorial to get to the
Metro station.  It features 19 man-sized statues of ordinary men on a
patrol.  This memorial was especially meaningful to me because my father
was a Korean War veteran, and he passed away in December.

For our final day, we accommodated the kids and went to Six Flags
(http://www.sixflags.com/america/index.aspx).  I'm not an amusement park
guy, I guess.  Eventually it was over.

That evening, Lisa, Anabel and I, heavily loaded with camera batteries,
drove down to the Lincoln Memorial and got pictures of it, and also got
pictures of the Korean War Memorial.

And we returned on Tuesday.

66 responses total.

I am glad the room worked out for you.  It sounds like you guys had an 
amazingly busy time, but also a fun time.  I wish I was still in DC - 
I could have fed you one night!  

Oh, and it's the Smithsonian Folklife Festival - they have it every 
year, highlighting on different countries/regions of the world.  It's 
a huge event and it's a lot of fun.  My mom came down in 2003 because 
Scotland was one of the countries.  I remember Rick joining us for one 
night, which was great fun.  

That was it, yes, the Folklife Festival.

I remarked that we should drop by the USDA -- which is also on the
National Mall -- and ask for a tour.  I speculated they might well erect
a statue of us.  I was thinking they might not get too many visitors there.

That sounds really nice. You might have even seen my brother at the 
metro station since that is the station he uses to get to work

The last time we visited DC we got on the metro at a station near the
Pentagon. Its was kinda weird sitting in a train with so many oak
leaves, eagles, and even some stars.

Wow, Jep, that was run to read.  I really like visiting DC and your
comments reminded me of some nice times.

When I was still living there, my sister in law came to visit for two 
weeks, by herself.  This meant I had to find a ton of things for her 
to do on the days when we were working.  She (and my ex and I when we 
could) toured things I didn't even know you could tour, namely the Old 
Executive Office Building and the Department of the Treasury.  It 
should be noted that these were two of the most boring tours I've ever 
been on in my life, and I'd imagine the USDA would be around the same.

I imagine my family would have found the USDA about as boring as
anything we could think up, hence my comments.

I am also sure there are those who would as happily make the trip to
Washington for that tour as I would do for the Air and Space Museum.  I
can imagine their comments coming out.  "Wow, have you ever seen a field
corn display like *THAT*!"  "Those guys really know fertilizer!"  "That
gave me a new appreciation for the eye rings on the front of the harvester."

 Right now I'm imagining the USDA tour guide, the Maytag repairman,
 and the Vice President's human rights advisor hanging out at a bar
 somewhere complaining about the pointlessness of their jobs..

Ok, THAT was funny....

He he,

very nice!

Re #0:  Heh.  Your description of the van reminded me of "Little Miss
Sunshine".

I had the same thought.

Restaurants are usually a lot cheaper for lunch than supper.

Only at nice restaurants, not "family" restaurants.

The cheap Chinese places we have been to are about $5 for lunch and $8 for
supper, or $2 more than that for buffets.  How can a family restaurant charge
about $15 plus tax and tip for meals some of them for children?  What do you
get for all that money?  Surely the 10 year olds don't drink wine.

Kids over about 5-6 usually no longer eat from the 'kids menu.'  Most kid
menus don't give a growing kid enough food and there is a very limited
selection.  My kids stopped eating from kid menus around 3-4.  They prefered
real food rather then the limited offering of mac and cheese, spaghetti,
hotdogs, hamburgers, or grilled cheese.  Most kid menus cater to kids with
no food imagination.  Mine started out solid foods with tastes from my plate,
whatever was on it.  Damon's first non milk food was hoisin sauce (we dipped
his pacifier in it when he fussed at chinese restaurants), his first solid
food was rice with Lemon Chicken sauce on it.  When asked what he wanted for
dinner on his 4th birthday, he replied "the place with the colored chips,"
meaning Bankok Cuisine in Sterling Heights, and he wanted Pad Thai, Gang Gi
Chicken, and Thai Iced Tea to go with the colored shrimp chips.  I still have
a hard time handling Gang Gi at the heat levels that he and STeve want it.
Staci's food introduction was similar (except that Damon fed her part of his
peanut butter and jelly sandwich when she was 2 weeks old, she liked it and
the Dr laughed at it.)

Also take in the fact that DC area restuarants are somewhat more expensive
that restuarants in this area.  We also take foodstuffs with us for breakfast
and lunch when we travel in that area, even with just the two of us.  That
way we can justify eating out at local spots for dinner.  When the kids
traveled with us, and even on ocassion now, we would often head for a local
park and grill dinner.  There is almost always a bag of charcoal and a lighter
chimney (we do not use ligher fluid) in the back of the car.  We try to keep
a box with paper plates, a sharp knife or two, aluminum foil, plastic
tableware, hotdog/marshmallow forks, salt, pepper & a few spices, matches or
cigarette lighter, and newspaper (for kindling the charcoal) there as well.
Then all we have to do is hit a local grocery for the foodstuffs, anything
from simple hot dogs to steaks.  One favorite is stew beef, assorted veggies,
and Paul Newman's Italian Salad Dressing mixed in aluminum foil packages and
placed on the coals.  Wonderful and reasonably inexpensive. (Now if I can just
figure out how to do Basamati rice on a grill we'll be all set.  I am thinking
that some of the truckers cigarette lighter operated pans may be coming into
our lives before too long.)

All through our trip, I amazed and astonished my family by talking to
people at random, everywhere we went.  That might surprise some people
here, too, who have talked to me at various M-Net get-togethers and the
like.  At a party, I can hide in my shell with the best of them.  A lot
of us are like that.

Talking to people in Washington was a survival skill.  I mentioned how
friendly people are there.

Anyway, I don't have any trouble talking to people one on one.  I am
just not good in groups.

It can be interesting.  I talked to college students, a recent grad who
was working as a DOD contractor, a State Department employee, and
several other tourists.

I got some useful information that way.  For example, when I saw the
marker for the Korean War Veteran's Memorial, it looked like it hadn't
been built yet.  Someone told me, no, it's there, and she gave me some
information about it.  If I hadn't talked to her, I wouldn't have known
it was there.  It was getting dark and I didn't see it.  Once I saw it,
I was very glad I had.

Hey jep,though I haven't seen you since you visited in NC years ago, I'm
 not surprised that you talked to people at random!  I'm like that, too,
 though-in being able to talk to to people one on one vs in a group!
[Group  settings, I tend to just sit and listen.]

[This is item 76 in the travel conference and remains as 42 in the
summer  agora/2007.]

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- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss