I was in Washington DC in May of this year...that was a fun experience. I was visiting a friend in Virginia, and we decided to take a little day trip up to DC. Since we knew that driving around the city would waste a lot of gas and parking would be hard to find, we chose the metro. We left way too early in the morning and drove about an hour to the outskirts of Virginia to catch the metro. Needless to say, we were plumb tuckered already. We both had on flip flops (probably our first mistake), but we wisely chose shorts and tee shirts to beat the heat.

We saw quite a few interesting people on the metro, as per usual. To our surprise, it was a lot cheaper for a day pass than we had anticipated, and we were pleased. It wasn't very hard to read the metro map, but once we got off and were no longer on the structure of the metro, we just stood there asking, "which way next?" Then our angel came! A run down looking man handing out maps (were we uspposed to tip him?...oops!) We thanked him for our saving grace, and went on our merry way.

Our first stop was the old post office. We saw some pretty sweet action live jazz music and ate some overly expensive food and had a great time doing it. :D It took us a while to navigate around the city, but I have to tell you, by the end of the day we were experts and felt like we had lived in the city forever.

One of the highlights of my DC day trip was the Holocaust Museum. Online, I found out that it was free, so we booked a spot online so that we wouldn't face the possibilty of not getting in after all the free tickets were gone. We got in! I had been looking forward to this day for a long time. The museum was extremely well put together and very moving. I was happy to have had a chance to see it.

Of course we walked by the really tall memorial and the reflection pool. We bought icecream from a vendor that was way too expensive but, hey, carpe diem, right? It's all about the experience. We saw the giant Lincoln and sat on the marble steps for a while, cooling off and resting from all our walking.

The next step was the White House. A very disapointing trip to say the least. I have a friend who works for the President and who was able to get us a tour of the White House. She called us while we were in the Holocaust Museum and gave us the good new of the tour. Unfortunately, she asked what we were wearing. She said in order for us to go into the White House, we had to be dressed in business clothes. Before we left that morning, I had suggested that we bring dress clothes in case, but we didn't. I guess that's life, huh? No White House tour...but it looked really cool from a distance.

I hadn't been to DC since I was little, so this was a refresing experience. We both fell asleep on the metro, holding tightly to our bags, and made it back in once piece. All in all, it was a good day.