Washington DC - 2016

 - Monday, February 15th 2016 - 

It's a snowy weekend, filled with fire alarms and very cold photoshoots.  Monday morning my parents; Brenda, Rick, and I check out of the Gaylord National Harbor Hotel.  Outside of the hotel there are plenty of Cabs waiting, and the man up front finds us a black one.  Flat rate fair into DC proper.  We hop in and proceed to enjoy not being behind the wheel as our driver slips and slides through barely plowed roads.

The Gaylord's Atrium

From the amazingly beautiful Gaylord, to a historical property called the Hotel Harrington... Our first impression of the hotel made us skeptical.  It was pretty expensive, all things considered, and the first elevator we saw was out of service.  To the hotel's credit, it is OLD and in a great location.  Our room didn't smell the best but passed the bed-bug check I do on everything I sleep on.  We settled down for a bit to see what was in the area and what we wanted to do that day.

Hotel Harrington

We soon settled on going to the near-er Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and soon walked on out to that.  Unfortunately we didn't spend a TON of time there, only about 10-2 as it was still snowing, very cold, and everything had signs that they were closing at 3.  Food there was amazing, expensive, but amazing.  Apparently the Smithsonian's actually care about their cafeteria food.

Once that was done we wandered our frozen butts back home and lounged around for a bit.  The parents took a nap and I fussed about online.  Soon enough though we all got up (5 or so) and went across the street for coffee.  There, we asked about where to eat in the area, and the cinema.  Got directions on where to find one (we decided to watch Deadpool) and would slowly make our way, hugging the buildings where it was least icy, towards Chinatown.  We didn't actually go TO chinatown, but it was enroute that we found the cinema and a place to eat.  Food was pretty good, service was a little slow but not terrible.  It was inside the cinema that we ate, and had a homeless man in a bright orange vest come up to us and beg us for money.  The staff did get him out pretty quickly, but it was still awkward.  I was horribly allergic to all the alcohol I ordered, and they took off 1.5 of the drinks I attempted.

Deadpool was enjoyable and we would walk carefully back home.  My feet were dead from photography over the weekend and appreciated getting back to the hotel.  Walking on that much ice was kind of fun, I never fell, but my parents were slow and careful and it took awhile to get far.  I've never been on a sidewalk that was slicker than an ice skating rink, it was fun.

 - Tuesday, February 16th 2016 -
We woke up and headed downstairs to Harriet's for breakfast.  Which honestly was pretty horrible.  There was lipstick on my cup and food was horribly bleh.  At least it wasn't expensive?

We went back to the room and dressed and showered for the day, and headed out to the Museum of Air and Space.  Where I got to do a flight simulator with dad and go upside-down...it was awesome. Seriously.  I like to barrel roll.

 Unfortunately we had to leave to get food as all they had was McDonalds.  The place down the street we went was AMAZING (National Museam of the American Indian) and I really can't say enough good about the food they cook there.

We stopped by the Smithsonian Castle for coffee and a break from the wind.  Dad wanted to explore the under construction front lawn.  So we did, and we also walked by the White House, and basically everywhere.  Not many photos because I was freezing, apologies there!

That night we went to China town and explored around, dad got to eat Sushi for his first time ever!  We ended up stopping at Nando's to let him have some of the chicken there (hey, it's good...) before heading home.  Chinatown is so pretty!


We walked back to the hotel and got late check out for the following day.  Our flight wasn't leaving (united, woo..) until around 4pm.  We had tickets to go to the top of the Washington Monument around 10am, so we went to sleep so we could get an early start.



 - Wednesday, February 17th 2016 - 

Well the Monument's elevator was broken, so we spent time tooling around and stopping at random historical sites.  Lots of dumb selfies were done, lots of sore feet were had.  I was grateful when we went home! The hotel helped us flag a taxi and everything there went smoothly.