On Thursday afternoon, Carly and I boarded the Virgin America flight bound for Dulles. This was game 2 of the World Series and luckily the plane was satellite TV enabled so we were able to watch. This was awesome because most of the plane was also watching it and cheered - have i mentioned I'm a sucker for comradery? And not to mention the flight itself was super smooth so it made it go by extremely fast (and in 4 hours and 40 minutes). So when we landed, let's just say we were all about Virgin America.
The next day we decided to walk to the Capitol since we were having lunch with Michael on his break. We were staying in Foggy Bottom, and if you've ever been to DC, or looked at a map, Foggy Bottom is on the west side of the city and the Capitol is way over on the east side. Our hotel was only a few blocks from the Mall so we started walking East. Michael kept asking where we were and I kept telling him, Michael, we're close, we see the Washington Monument, and the Capitol is right after it. we'll see you soon. He kept telling me no, we still had a ways to go, and i thought, my goodness Michael, don't you live here? Well, an hour and a half later, we made it. And as it turned out, he did know what he was talking about. and we were wrong. Side note, when looking at a map, also take a peak at the distance key on the map. Apparently we accidently walked five miles. Whoops. And believe me - our dogs were barking.
Once we finally caught up to Michael, he took us on the super secret Senator subway that goes to the Capitol from all the congressional buildings (we took the one from the Russell Building since that's where he works) and on a tour of the Capitol. But since we were a little late, it was a super fast tour and then we bid adieu until later. Carly and I then walked over to the Supreme Court building, learned a little and stopped to watch a movie on the history, which almost put us to sleep so we decided to call Uncle and go back to the Foggy Bottom (via Metro) nap before Sarah got there. It was then that we first heard about a storm that was brewing.
Michael had told us about this flea market that is over by the Capitol so on Saturday morning, we went to the Eastern Market where we did our duty to go shopping, buy some cool prints, and saw a lot of cute crafts. We stopped in to this restaurant next door with $5 Mimosas where we had some brunch (best chocolate chip pancakes, ever), later we went to the Library of Congress where we saw Thomas Jeffereson's personal library, and eventually made our way to the Smithsonian American History Museum (the Star Spangled Banner - well worth it).
All day we had seen people riding bikes from "Capitol Bikeshare" and we kept saying, oh that would be cool. And low and behold we actually went through with it. This service let you pick up a bike from a kiosk and then return it to any kiosk in the city (and they were all over the place!). We made our way though the National Mall and then through the Tidal Basin over to the Thomas Jefferson Memorial. It was the perfect timing too since it was evening time and people were fleeing the city due to the storm so we didn't need to dodge people. I highly recommend doing this, it's the best way to see the monuments.
And to round out the night we expanded our horizons and went to U Street and stuffed our faces with Ethiopian food. This was delicious. I have no idea what we ordered but holy toledo, it was good.
So we got our fill of sights and filled our tummies...a perfect way to end Phase One.
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