Weekend Recap: DC

Late Sunday night I flew into DCA.
After finding out that my 'shuttle' that I had booked online was not available, I managed to find a ride to the hotel... probably not the smartest way I have ever done, but hey, live and learn!

So.

By managed to get to sleep by 1:30am but forgot to change my cell phone alarm to off.  So promptly at 5:30 am I had to get out of bed to turn it off.

I couldn't sleep much after that so I read a while, and eventually got ready to meet Kate.  I was still an hour early.  I decided to take a walk.  My hotel was nice.  The Melrose Hotel. Just blocks down the street was the White House.  That was my goal.

Kinda broke my heart to see the homeless around, but unable to help them out.  But DC is MUCH cleaner than Cincy.  Smells better and more spacious too.  I did feel comfortable walking Pennsylvania Ave by myself.

I managed to find 3 starbucks in that short walk.  Imagine that.

The Reflection Pool was under construction.

At 10 am I nervously waited for Kate in the lobby of my hotel.  I was worried I wouldn't recognize her.  Thanks to Facebook, I had an idea of what she looked like now.  Shortly after 10am she arrived.  We quickly set out in search of a coffee shop to sit down and 'catch up'.  Since it has only been 17 years since we saw each other we managed to talk for about 2 hours there, then we set out to continue try some tourist type things, we checked out the Lincoln Memorial.  Here is Kate on the left, looking out from the Lincoln Memorial toward the Washington Monument. It was free to see the memorials and monuments, and even the Smithsonian.

By the time we left the Smithsonian, we both were tired.  We had managed to walk about 7 miles.  Yes, I know that from Kates pedometer.  We were going to meet up with her husband Nick about 8pm.  We took the metro (subway) back closer to the hotel and found a place to eat called Thunder Burger. I got the Ventura Burger with Sweet potato fries.  Kate talked Nick into trying Corn Dogs.

Kate and Nick were telling me about some of the differences in the countries..

• Food in America is very extreme.  More sugar.  Fake colors. Probably more salt.  Kate picked up some Kraft Mac-n-cheese to take home with her.  
• They have 28 mandatory vacation days a year.
• They have a public health system and said it isn't that bad.
• They have 20% tax.  To pay for the health system.

It was a shame we didn't have more time to talk, but I had to head to the airport at 4 am, so by 11:30 we had said our good-byes but managed to sneak in a quick picture before leaving each other.

She was talking about making a trip in the next year to visit where she grew up and show her husband a bit of culture shock in good ol' Appleton Wisconsin.  He grew up in Africa and likes to eat meat.  Weird meat.  Like not normal meat.  Anyway, it was fun trying to help Kate warn her husband about all things Wisconsin. He has apparently heard of her Grandparents great love of Shopko. lol.

It was so much fun, I wish I had a bit more sleep though!