Weekend DC Visit–Part Two

Phew… what a long week. Did everyone survive? I mean, obviously you were on the edge of your seat wondering when I was going to post the rest of my D.C. visit pictures. The wait is over! You can get on with your weekend!

Saturday, after a day full of sightseeing, we grabbed dinner at a sushi restaurant close to Brandon’s friend’s house where we were staying for the weekend. We ordered way too much food and it was delicious, but I refrained from taking any creepy food pics. I actually got to bed at a decent time after dinner and woke up ready to pack in more activities before our flight at 7pm on Sunday night.

After a delicious and greasy breakfast at Tastee Diner, our first stop of the day was to visit the Obamas. Again – gorgeous weather!

Like the Capitol, it was kind of surreal to be seeing a building I have heard about, learned about, and watched on TV my whole life. It is very beautiful but also more understated than some of the crazy-ornate government buildings.

After snapping pics at the White House, Brandon’s friend/our chauffer/tour guide pointed out the Executive Office Building right next door. This is where the business goes down! Most of the White House staff actually work in this building.

When I was done wishing that Michelle would come out and say hello, we headed off to see the Lincoln Memorial and the National Mall. On the way there we saw a couple interesting things -

The Jefferson Memorial:

The Albert Einstein Memorial (which we loved. Because we are nerdy engineers.) At his feet, there is a depiction of the stars and sky, and the paper in his hand has the most important equations discovered by Einstein written on it.

Then, we walked over to the Mall. The reflecting pool is closed for construction… which we didn’t know ahead of time, so that was a pretty big bummer! That’s probably the only thing that didn’t go absolutely perfectly on the trip so not a big deal, but I really want to go back and see it sometime when it is open.

The Lincoln Memorial was really impressive and PACKED with people. It gave me goosebumps to see the spot where Martin Luther King Jr. gave the “I Have a Dream” speech.

Finally, we walked through the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall before heading back to the car. I was caught off-guard when I got a little emotional walking through the memorial. It is pretty powerful stuff to see the sheer number of names of the service people who died or went missing during the war.

We saw the World War II Memorial from the Lincoln Monument and from several points in our drive, and I would like to see it more close up on another visit in the future. The Teddy Roosevelt Island sounds like one of the more “fun” memorials (it was described to me as sort of a “secret island” – sold!), so I’d like to see that one, too. After the Mall, we were just about tourist-ed out, and went back to the house to relax and eat some pizza before packing up and heading to the airport.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – we had a perfect trip. The weather was gorgeous, our flights were easy with no delays, our friends were the best hosts and tour guides we could have dreamed up, and I made a couple new friends over the weekend, too. I was so grateful to have D.C. natives’ advice on what to do and see, and having a friend with a car to drive us around made transportation a breeze (especially because we got lucky with parking spots, too!). Plans are already in the works to see our friends again sometime soon, and I would visit D.C. again in a heartbeat.

The End! The best/worst thing about travel is it makes me want to do MORE of it, so hopefully I will have more fun plans and trips to blog about soon.

I can’t believe it’s been a week since we left for the trip – this week was crazy busy! Brandon and I are both looking forward to a weekend with no plans on the calendar to regroup and get back into a “normal” schedule. I may or may not have signed up for another half marathon coming up in less than a month (WHATWASITHINKING) and totaled 3.6 miles of fail this week, so I need to get back on the workout wagon and FAST. I’ll be back to check in soon!

What do you have planned for the weekend? Do you have any fun travel plans coming up?