The District

I'm horribly dehydrated and headache-y because of the combination of last night's green beer and then getting totally ripped off at the National Zoo vending machine and getting fruit punch instead of water, the lower half of my body is screaming at me for doing nothing but laying down and resting my legs that backtracked block after block, and my eyes are burning from construction dust and reading all day without my glasses - yet I blog away. I had an incredible time playing tourist in a city I've been to countless times today. 

Sometimes, I just need to go to someplace familiar and walk around like I've never seen it before. I do this sometimes with Shepherdstown when the leaves start to turn orange and yellow, but I needed a different sort of change of scenery and since Kelly and I weren't planning to go anywhere for spring break, D.C. won. Kelly has never been able to play D.C. tourist, because her mom has worked down there for the past ridiculous amount of years. I did my freshman year, because D.C. was still new back then, even living outside of Baltimore, the traffic into D.C. still made it not worth the trip. 

So, we played. We went to the Zoo, and stood in the packs of people trying to get a peek at the giant pandas. All three were enjoying what were, apparently, delicious snacks of bamboo. We saw fantastic birds, the big cats (which were all hiding when I was at the zoo in May), the construction that will be the elephant trail, and some adorable pygmy hippos. The poor otters were not around, because of the elephant construction closing in on their little otter habitat, but I'll let it slide. Desperate for water, I found a $3.00 vending machine, and when I pressed the water button, I was given fruit punch...any takers? Too much weird, sugary, syrupy stuff in it for me. 

We attempted the Metro at rush hour and ended up walking from Metro Center to the White House. I remember being able to get closer in 2006 when I was there around the fourth of July. Now, you have to stand on the other side of the street away from the fence that goes around the backyard, but it was still fun. Kelly has some sort of magical aura that tells people to ask her to take their picture, and someone actually told her she should charge. We didn't though, and took a few nice family White House photos. Who knows, maybe some of them will go on this year's holiday card? 

We were probably really obnoxious, but that's okay. It's nice sometimes, to see things you've seen billions of times and will probably see a billion more times. I had fun, and will be ready to do it again next year.