A Woz Adventure to D.C. Part Three

We left off saying good-bye to my awesome Disney friend Missy, and we were headed for the zoo!  As most things are in D.C., the zoo is part of the Smithsonian and therefore it's FREE.  Gotta love that about D.C.!

on the train

I remember it taking a while, but we made it.  The escalator out was HUGE!  This picture doesn't do it justice. 

After we emerged from underground it was a bit of a walk to the zoo.  We don't mind a walk-we are New Yorkers and used to walking 10-20 blocks without a problem, but for those who aren't used to it-it might feel a bit far.  On the way is more beautiful architecture!

And we saw a few Cherry Blossoms!

There was a line to pose in the zoo sign.  LOL

It was Easter and the zoo was MOBBED.  I knew it would be, but wow.  People everywhere.  We stopped for a bathroom break first....20 minutes later we finally went to see some animals!

They had some fun interactive exhibits for the kids.  Here is Henry and I pretending we are gazelles hunting prey.

We did this twice.  Henry could have stayed here all day hunting prey!  He thought it was so fun!

After we made our way around a few areas we headed for the pandas.  The pandas are really popular being there are only like two zoos in the nation that have them!  The line to even get into the panda building was a good 20 minutes, with a security guard keeping the crowd under control and only allowing so many in at a time. 

Pretty serious for a zoo!

Eventually we were in.  And there he was.  Chillin'.  Eating some bamboo.

We checked out a few of the exhibits.  Henry, of course, found the panda poo one to be the most interesting.

Back to the pandas.

His belly must have been getting full, he had to lay down!  Anytime he made any sort of semi-large movement the entire crowd would gasp.  You'd think we had never seen a real live panda before.  Oh...wait...we hadn't! :)

Joe was likely DONE with the panda well before I was, but eventually I peeled myself away from this adorable creature. 

Red Panda (Firefox)

Elephants

I tried to read him the details on the little pull-outs, but he was only interested in actually pulling on them as hard as he could...!

In the bird house.

Henry took a special interest in this guy.

For my Disney friends: Mingos!  No watah!

Suddenly, some sort of alarm went off and the flamingos went CRAZY!  Flapping their wings, squawking and running around.  I have no idea what it was all about.

Creepy.

After we finished with the birds Henry reported that he was ready to go back to the hotel.  I was a little bit bummed because I would have liked to seen the monkeys, but didn't push it.  We were tired and still sore from the adventure the previous day - so we told him we'd find some ice cream and go from there. He was all game for that!  We headed back to the front of the zoo and as we got closer we heard a loud crackling noise...as we left the zoo and started to head across the street to the frozen yogurt place I looked to my left and saw that the woods, just outside the zoo were on fire!

There were already a few police on the scene and a crowd was quickly gathering.  Within a few minutes the DCFD arrived.

A few minutes later, they had it under control.

It was neat for Henry to see the fire truck arrive, the guys jump off and grab the hoses and put out the fire. 

After the excitement died down we scurried into the yogurt shop to make our creations.  We have a similar yogurt shop by our house that we love - lots of flavors and lots of toppings!

Henry's - Vanilla yogurt, strawberries and some crushed up waffle cone!

We all very much enjoyed our desserts.  We sat there for a while, Henry met the mascot of the store (if I remember correctly, it was a dolphin?  Who knows-it was a character and Henry loves to meet and hug them!) and we discussed our plans.  We wanted to meet up with another one of my Disney friends, Lisa, for dessert after dinner - but it was a bit early for that, plus we just gorged on ice cream!  However, we wanted to go to the Cheesecake Factory (we don't have them in NYC, and missed them!), and that was quite a haul on the train.  Plus, we figured there would be a wait--so maybe by that time we'd start to get hungry.  So we eventually peeled ourselves off the chairs at the froyo shop and started the trek back to the train.

Some entertainment by the train

We got to the Cheesecake Factory and....there was a 5 minute wait for a table...so much for THAT plan.  Ha!  But it worked out.  By the time we did bathroom breaks and figuring out what we wanted to eat, we were starting to get hungry.  The food, as always, was delicious.  When we were wrapping up dinner we called Lisa and she met us at the restaurant jut in time to order dessert!  Joe, Henry and I shared a Banana Creme Cheesecake slice--and it was amazing!  Lisa and her daughter got a slice as well.  The kids had a lot of fun being silly together and it was GREAT meeting them!

Lisa knew of a park nearby, so the kids could run off some of the sugar and the parents could maybe even get a conversation in...what a thought! :)

They were fast friends

The kids played and Lisa and I had a chance to chat....and what did we talk about?  Disney of course!  She is also a Travel Agent specializing in Disney Vacations (for a different company though), so it was great to compare experiences, and that sort of thing.  It started to get cool, so we decided to call it a night and Lisa was gracious enough to offer to drive us back our hotel!  Henry was ELATED to ride in a car!

Lisa and I and the kids!

An adorable bag of goodies Lisa brought me and Henry!

And that was our day!  One more day in DC!

A Woz Adventure to D.C. Part Two

We left off after visiting the Capital, on our way to the Washington Monument.

We are New Yorkers, so we walk a lot.  We are used to walking a couple miles - even Henry is!  So we didn't really think twice about walking to the Washington Monument, we just set out for it.  But first, we needed to find some lunch!  We pulled out our phones and just found something...we ended up going for a place called the Green Turtle a few blocks away.

Some Cherry Blossoms.  We were there for the yearly festival, unfortunately the Blossoms were very early this year, due to our mild winter.  We saw very, very few blooming trees. I was a bit bummed, but gives another excuse for a return visit!

I loved the old architecture.  It was beautiful!

Despite seeing NYFD fire trucks on a daily basis, Henry was still pretty excited to see this one!

Ha!

Our lunch was good!  Joe and I both had some tasty salads and I believe Henry had pizza.  After lunch we set out to find a bit of dessert to fuel our afternoon.

Henry and Joe were elated to find the Red Velvet Cupcakery.  I'm not much of a cupcake person, but I spied a Starbucks on the next street and a latte was calling my name.

I love this picture of H!  :)  This was inside Starbucks.  I snuck a bite of Henry's Peanut Butter Cupcake and it was delicious.

Back on our mission, we went back down to the Mall and started on our trek.

National Aquarium - we didn't make it there this trip, though it gets very good reviews!

After much, much, MUCH walking we were finally getting close!

It was neat to see in person!  The base was closed due to repairs needed from our recent earthquake.

After we gazed up at the Monument, we pulled up some grass and just relaxed in the sun for a while.  Henry ran around and made friends with every dog that was within a 10 foot radius.  The area is big and grassy - it reminded me of the Great Lawn in Central Park with lots of people relaxing together.

We talked over a game plan for the rest of the day.  There were fireworks tonight and I really wanted to see them, I love fireworks!  There wasn't enough time to go back to the hotel, but we had several hours to kill before it got dark.  The Lincoln Memorial was waaaaaaay down there.

Should we walk that far?  

No.

Yes.

No.  I'm too tired.

What else are we going to do?  Sit here for hours with a toddler?

That's laughable!  Okay, let's go.

We did NOT feel like walking that far, but we did.

WWII Memorial

We walked and walked and walked!!!  It was a loooooooong haul.  But...we made it!

It's BIG!

From the top of the stairs -- it would be so much prettier if the reflecting pool wasn't under construction, the grass was green and the Cherry Blossoms were blooming!  Sigh!  Must return!!!

Despite the construction, I was still happy to finally see it all!

After seeing the Memorial we decided to head to where we would want to be for fireworks.  From doing research online I found a couple spots that would provide a good view.  We decided to head for one that was in a park.  It wasn't a quick walk...we again weren't looking forward to that walk, but...we did it!

On the way we came across the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial.

Walking around the lake.  There were many low branches and NO railing!!  It was a pretty walk at least!  It would have been fantastic if the Cherry Blossoms were blooming!

The Jefferson Monument across the lake.  NO WAY were we walking that far! (but in reality, we ended up not that far away...!)

We kept walking, and walking, and walking.  We came across some tents for the Cherry Blossom Festival and checked those out - found a map and spoke to one of the Park Rangers about where exactly to go to find this park for the fireworks.  We were going in the right direction.  

We continued on.  Walking, walking, walking.  I had to go to the restroom and we were getting hungry.  Walk, walk, walk.  We finally made it to the park.  

There was NO ONE there.  No one!  And no bathrooms.  No tents for the festival.  Hmmm...this was not the "hot spot" for the fireworks that we expected.  We stood at the shore and looked across the Potomac. 

And I realized THAT is where we want to be.  I could see a PINK stage - that is where it was happen'! We'd surely find a restroom and food there!  Soooooo...more walking.  Over a giant bridge and down a hill. But we were there!  There were tons of food trucks - but first things first, BATHROOM!  We walked, and walked and walked.  I couldn't find one!  I pretty much refuse to do a porta-potty, so we ended up walking several blocks away from the river to a local grocery store with a clean restroom...and a line out the door.  Thankfully it moved fast.  That complete, we walked back to the festival and got into the first food line.  It was LONG.

And didn't move for a good 5 minutes.

I walked forward and found out they were running out of food.

The fireworks were about to start, we ditched the line to find a spot.

In hindsight, Henry and Joe should have stayed down at the festival for food and I should have gone out on my own for the bathroom, then they could have gotten us all food.  But, that's not how we did it.  We did end up with a nice spot though and enjoyed the fireworks!

The boats in the river lit up in pink lights and little boats designed as Koi Fish "swam" around before the show started.

And finally!  The fireworks!  We had walked a good 5 miles for this!  Henry asked manyyyyy times during the show where Cinderella's Castle and Tinkerbell were!  It was cute.

At the finale, they lit up several of the docks!  It was neat!

After the show we tried to scurry into a food truck line - we were HUNGRY!  But...they were all closed!  So, we thought if we saw something on our way to the Metro, we'd get it, otherwise we'd figure something out.

So we walked with the crowds about 10 more blocks to the Metro.  And finally could SIT!  It felt sooooo good to sit!  At our stop we decided to take a "short-cut" that ended up being a bit longer.  LOL  But, we cut through the Marriott hotel and helped ourselves to some Cherry Blossom infused water.  We were SO thirsty and hungry and just exhausted.  The water was refreshing!

Stealing water!

Back at our hotel we still hadn't eaten and we debated on ordering pizza again...but just decided to order room service instead.  I'm so glad we did!  It was expensive, but delicious!  I had a quesadilla and Joe had this fantastic meatloaf:

Henry munched off both of us.

Then it was time for bed.  We were so tired we were loopy!  We all slept VERY well that night, Henry literally fell asleep within seconds.

The next morning was Easter!  We had thought about trying to find a church service to attend, but we didn't really know where any churches were, so we just decided to make it a slow morning, spending time with each other and we talked to Henry about the importance and meaning of Easter.

After breakfast the boys went for a swim while I ran upstairs and hid plastic candy eggs all over our hotel room.  Henry had a BALL trying to find them!

His big gift was this set of Presidential vehicles.  He loved it!

We continued our slow morning by just hanging out in the hotel room, resting our legs and watching cartoons.  We were all sore from the previous day.  Eventually we headed out, we were meeting up with my Disney friend Missy for lunch!

It was wonderful finally meeting her in person!  She's fantastic!!!

We shared Disney stories and future trip plans, of course!  And she brought Henry a DC Nationals baseball shirt, which was unexpected and so kind!!!

After we parted ways, Missy was off to work and we were going to the Zoo!  I'll share that and the rest of our day next time!