Pics Online

Here are the pics from today. Pay particular attention to Abbie's photo skills as she did her best to get a shot of a gorilla, and also notice "The Summer House." Leah and I didn't see this on our last visit, but the kids found it pretty quick. It's amazing how quickly thirsty kids can hone in on water. Anyway, when we started hitting the caches, it was the first thing on our list, and we found out that it was built shortly after the Capitol becuase visitors complained about not being able to find water nearby. Anyway, enjoy!

Friday, June 22, 2007

Standing on the Train

I seem to have misplaced the cable for getting pics off the camera, so I don't know when I'll be able to show you any of the pictures that we are taking. I'll post some as soon as they are ready, though. In the meantime, I'll just continue to update on our trip so far.

We got up pretty early this morning and headed out to the zoo. Surprisingly, there is no entrance fee for the National Zoo. Not so surprising, it's not the best zoo you'll ever go to. I guess it's true that you get what you pay for. I was particularly impressed by the fact that they have an entire section of the zoo dedicated to tamarins. This is especially interesting when you note that that is also pretty much all that's in the small mammal house. I swear, those things must breed like rabbits because the zoo is about out of room for housing their collection. If I never see a tamarin again, I'll die happy.

The "O-Line" was about the coolest thing at the zoo, but it wasn't even really worth the entrance fee. Basically, it's a series of cables suspended in the air over the zoo that allow the orangutans to move from one area to the next. They are deterred from climbing down by electrified wiring, and the height keeps them from jumping down. Pretty much, the sign says, "We hope not," in response to the question of whether the orangs will escape as a result of this program. It was pretty neat to see them traversing in the air above us, though.

After the zoo, we grabbed a bite at a McDonald's near the Metro station on the way to the Capitol, and the kids thought it was the best since it was underground. Once we arrived at Union Station, we had to figure out how to get to the Russell Senate Office building to meet with a tour guide in Senator Martinez's office. Senator Martinez is from Florida, but a friend of mine from Ecom has recently moved to DC to be with her fiancée and he works for Senator Martinez, so that's how we got the tour organized. Anyway, we set out with an intern that may have only given one or two tours previous to ours, but it was still pretty interesting.

The kids enjoyed riding on the basement tram from the Russell Senate Office building to the Capitol Building and then finding our way through the maze of tunnels beneath the Capitol. They also enjoyed hearing about the history of the building and checking out the paintings and sculpture. The tour wasn't very long but it was informative and was well worth our time. We all enjoyed it.

We decided after touring the Capitol that we wanted to stroll down the National Mall, and I had some virtual geocaches setup for us to go through. Since it is Washington D.C., it's not very common for someone to hide a traditional cache in the area (generally, a cache is a small container that is hidden for other to find and the exact coordinates of the location are posted on the internet; you can imagine why unattended packages hidden around D.C. would be a problem). Instead of traditional caches, people setup virtual caches which generally involves making your way to the prescribed coordinates and then answering some specific questions about the location. Generally, there will be a significant marker at the location with information that can rarely be found anywhere except at that location. For example, one of the ones that we did today involved a scale model of the solar system that exists in the National Mall, and we had to answer questions like where, specifically, the picture of Earth that they used came from. Anyway, it was a good distraction for the kids that kept them moving forward and helped them learn some things about the area as well.

About the time that we got to the Smithsonian Castle, we were all beat, so we jumped back on the Metro and headed to the hotel. Quickly, we dropped off our stuff, and got on the shuttle to a restaurant. We ate at a pretty decent restaurant in Old Town Alexandrian and then we came straight back here for some R-E-S-T. The kids are completely beat and are almost all already asleep. Tomorrow, we don't have any appointments, so we are going to let them sleep as long as possible.

So what about the title of this post? I bet you're still wondering. As we sat around the dinner table, we asked each of the kids what their favorite part of our day was, and almost unanimously, they said that it was standing on the train. On our of our trips today, the train was pretty packed, and the kids had nowhere to sit, so we all stood for the duration of that trip. If I had known that was all it took to give them a good vacation, I think we could have saved a ton on our budget.

The Long Way Around

I'm not sure how much internet access I'm going to pay for in this hotel room, so I don't know exactly when this will be posted. I generally get free internet, but that doesn't seem to be the case here.

 

We're in DC and at our hotel, and it's been a long day in getting here. We woke up about 5am and starting getting the kids ready for our 8:30am flight. Leah wanted to leave the house by 6am, and I think we pulled out of the driveway at about 6:04am. Good job, Leah.

I had already set a notification on the AA site to text my phone with gate information two hours before the flight, so I was a little surprised when 6:30am rolled around, and I didn't have any messages. I asked Leah to get out the flight info and call AA to get the gate info, and it was then that she clarified our departure time. She had been telling me 8:30am every day for a week, but it was actually 8:50am. No big deal, just another 30 minutes of sleep I could have had. I made it up on the plane.

Anyway, DFW almost never has lines at security except when you have four tired children in tow, and then everyone in the metroplex is trying to get to gate C2 along with you. Yep, we had to stand in line. The first time I've ever had to do that at DFW, and you all know that I fly out of there fairly regularly. We made it through with no hitches and set off to our gate.

The kids had a good time looking out the window at the planes anticipating what was to come next. Finally, we were allowed to board, so we all settled into our seats for a good long flight. Everything went pretty well. Emma fell back to sleep, Abbie listened to music, Reagan watched a movie on my PSP, I worked my Games magazine. It was a nice flight, but we had to land eventually.

As we started our descent, we came into some turbulence. Reagan started to feel queasy first, and Leah armed her with an airsickness bag. Next, Leah started to get a green around the gills, and she armed herself. Finally, Abbie looked at me like she was going to faint. I quickly put a bag in her hands as well, and got it there just in time. As it turned out, Abbie was the only one that actually needed a bag, but I was sure glad that there were plenty to go around; just in case.

We flew into Baltimore, and once we were on the ground, we had to trek halfway across Maryland to get our luggage and catch the bus to the DC metro. The bus ride and train to the hotel combined was about an hour and a half, so the kids were pretty restless by the time we arrived at our stop. Thankfully, our hotel is just across the street from the metro station.

Since none of us had eaten since breakfast, we quickly dropped our things in our room and headed out to find dinner. The server at the restaurant looked at us a little funny for ordering dinner at 4:00pm, but we were too starved to care much. Following dinner, we walked around Old Town Alexandria for a bit and went down to the waterfront where the kids enjoyed looking across to the Capitol Dome and seeing all of the boats.

Tomorrow we're going to the zoo and on a tour of the Capitol Building, so the kids are already in bed and headed off to sleep. I should have some pictures to post after our day tomorrow and of course, I'll have another post.