DC Day 1

Hello everyone! My husband and I are in Washington D.C.! Isn't that exciting? Well, it's exciting for us, maybe not so much for you.

Anyway, my husband is here to attend a conference, and I decided to take a few days off of work so that we could make a little vacation out of it. (Also, I didn't want to be in a different state than him)

And because I'm excited/happy, I wanted to share some details with you guys. So here's a summary of our little trip so far.


We flew in to BWI this morning,

took a taxi to the hotel, and since it wasn't yet check-in time, we decided to wander around for a little while.

We tried to take the Metro, but uh... didn't work out so well. We were planning on picking up two $35 "1 Week" passes. But we couldn't figure out how to work any of the machines in the Metro station... So we asked someone to help us out. We were told that in order to get a 1 week pass, we had to buy a $10 SmarTrip card (with $8 worth of fares on it) and then we could put the $35 pass on it...
But uh, the only machine that sold SmarTrip cards was cash only... and didn't give change. So uh, no.

Sorry Metro, maybe we'll use you tomorrow.

But luckily, our cab driver told us that our hotel is only "a few blocks" away from a zoo. A zoo you say? Sounds cool! Turns out that "a few blocks" was more like a mile and a half (though it was a very pleasant walk in the 50 degree weather!), but on the other side it turned out that the zoo was The National Zoo! Which was easily the best way I can think of to spend a few hours.

Dama Gazelle

The National Zoo is run by the Smithsonian, which means that it's absolutely 100% free! So there's no reason not to go. When we got to the hotel there were about half a dozen people hanging out in the lobby waiting for check-in time. Why would they sit there and wait for 2 hours when there's a free zoo a short 20 minute walk away?

Baffling, really.

Cheetah

The zoo has elephants, and lions and reptiles and even a Giant Panda (though we didn't get to see it). There's so much to see, no one could possibly cover it all in the short time that we had.





We wandered around the zoo for about 2 hours, and only saw about half of it. At that point we were starting to get a bit tired (after a morning of travel), and we had a mile and a half walk back, so we decided to call it a day. But we saw so many amazing animals and such cool educational tools, I can't wait to go back!

And go back I will. Tomorrow my husband has to spend all day at his conference, so I'm on my own. I'm planning on swinging back to the zoo and then maybe checking out a museum or two!


Stay tuned!