Well yesterday (Day 5) was definitely a different experience for us, for sure! To start, we woke up to it POURING rain, right from the start. We ate a quick breakfast, got ready quickly, and then rushed over to the Natural History Museum.
Unfortunately, we didn't get a lot of time there because we had our White House Tour scheduled, but we still had some time to kill, so we saw what we could. Smithsonian Museums are seriously so cool. I told Stace I'm definitely bringing my family to DC and dedicating a whole day just to the museums. The shops have a lot of great things, and they all have some sort of Hello Kitty stuffed toy dressed up as something else. Apparently, she's huge here (did I mention there's a Hello Kitty ice cream truck as well?). We did manage to find some goodies to get there, but keeping them dry was a trick with how much walking we did (again, Stace really wanted to just ride scooters or bikes, I feel bad now because I was a little grumpy and just wanted to walk).
Once we were ready to face the rain again, we headed over to The White House. We got there early, but then they told us there were NO bags allowed at all, or even water bottles. We asked if there was a place to store them and they said nope and that we'll need to find a place to put them and come back. We RAN towards our hotel, we had just enough time to get to the hotel and get back if we went really, really quickly. We tried to ask other hotels if they'd be willing to hold them for us, but they said they couldn't take them, they were too close to the White House and had to help protect it. Stace ended up stopping and asked if I could run the bags to the hotel without her and meet back up with her, so I got her bag and left her on some corner and BOOKED it to the hotel.
I ended up getting to the hotel about 5 minutes before our tour started and knew I wasn't going to make it back (plus I kind of forgot where I left her, haha). I ended up texting her to go back and do the tour and I'll just meet her outside it. I dropped the gift shop items in our room and then went back to meet up with her. While I was so bummed to miss it, the tour meant SO much more to her so I knew I had to let her go. I walked around the house and got some photos while I waited for her, the tour was only 60 minutes so it wasn't too bad, I just got soaked outside. After that, we headed to the visitors center, which had some cool stuff. I liked seeing how they celebrated holidays and birthdays there, how crazy of an experience that would be.
After that, we headed over to the Supreme Court and Library of Congress. The Court building was ALL marble, which looked cool, and we even got to see the courtroom, which was cool (and a tour group got too loud and got shushed), but overall I wasn't too impressed with it. I would've skipped that if I had known there really wasn't much else to it. The Library, however, was SO amazing, very ornate and lots of details (especially the tiled ceilings). The gift shop even had a silly plate set shaped like a book (that I'm not going to lie, I kind of wanted, but it was SUPER expensive and I wasn't going to travel with a plate set back home).
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| Ceiling made of tiny tiles |
Once we finished with that, I finally caved and we got scooters and headed over to the Air and Space museum (which I got tickets for early enough). We got there a little too early and I saw the Hello Kitty ice cream truck (I had seen it the first day and told Stace I needed to get ice cream from that truck before we left and then we never saw it again and I worried I'd never get a chance, then when I saw it outside the museum I knew I had to get some). I was surprised they didn't have any Hello Kitty themed ice cream, but I got a brownie ice cream bowl and we went to the only dry spot nearby to enjoy our treats. The birdies were so very brave and kept coming up to us to try and grab our food, there was a little girl next to us that loved to scare them away. This rain was insane, I couldn't believe it was still going (I don't think I've ever been in a rain storm that has lasted this long before).
The museum, though, was REALLY cool. We couldn't see all of it because half of it was under construction, but what we did see was awesome. I loved the space area the most. And I did end up getting my Hello Kitty space suit stuffed animal toy for Cara, so I was really excited to surprise her with that.
After the museum, we grabbed some scooters again and went around to some shops. We found some fun stores with good stuff. Sometimes I'm glad that Stace is insistent on finding as many as possible to check out haha. After souvenir shopping we went out to dinner. I talked Stace into trying this place, Tonic at Quigleys because it had sounded so interesting a couple days ago, but I wasn't starving, like I usually am, so I feel like I didn't get the greatest item (I tried some mac n cheese concoction they had on the menu). You order it all via a QR code, which was cool, but it basically meant our waiter ignored us and wasn't the greatest. I normally tip 20% if they don't do the best service, but still cover us, my typical tip is 25%, but that one I did like 18% because it was just really bad.
Finally, we headed back to the hotel to pack up, watch more HGTV, take the nightly shower, and got to bed early to prepare for a very early morning (luckily, it went MUCH smoother than our return from Boston). The Uber ended up being an interesting experience. The guy was an immigrant and was telling us about his family and how he's going through a second marriage and has a younger kid and he's making sure he doesn't make the same mistakes he made with his older kids and being an Uber driver means he can be there for more events. He was nice and it was a really smooth ride and I'm glad we made it safely to the airport haha. The flight home was much smoother than the one out there and taking Trax back to my car wasn't so bad (Rachel even met up with me to walk back to the house, they are so nice!)
We were sad to leave, but the rain all day long (which I normally love rain, but when you are walking as most of your commute it's not ideal for the whole time) and hiccups from the last day made it a little easier to say goodbye. I'll totally miss exploring a new city, where they surprisingly didn't have nearly as much honking as the other major cities we've been to. I'll miss riding those super fun electric scooters. But I did learn that Stace really likes the room so cold (it's a good thing I packed some winter pajamas haha) and that skipping lunch and eating snacks is the way to go when exploring a city (you don't have to stop for lunch either, which is helpful and time saving). Oh and shins can hurt A LOT when you start walking more than you're used to haha.
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