welcome to my mind ...

*disclaimer: longer entry ahead; you've been warned*

As I mentioned previously, my vacation became rather busy starting on that Monday, the 3rd. Sunday the 2nd, was Rosh Hashanah so it was a wonderful family dinner. The food was delicious; my other cousins came over to join. I got to meet the newest member of the family {the wedding from last year, they're parents now} and she was mostly well behaved throughout dinner. I seem to first meet them when they're 3 week old blobs ...

Anywho, Monday was the tour of the National Mall. I got up a little earlier for that, since we wanted to get there shortly after they opened at 10. We spent almost the entire time the museums were open {until 5:30} just walking around. We went to 4 different ones, plus the sculpture garden. It started at the Castle, which is more like a welcome center. Then we moved to the American History Museum, followed by the Natural History Museum, and ending with the Air and Space Museum. It's a hard choice between the Natural History and Air and Space museums. Both are rather fascinating to me, and I took several pictures while inside both.

After walking around the National Mall, I walked to meet up with my cousin's best friend, and we went to a movie. Food didn't happen, but that's mostly because we spent a lot of time in traffic trying to get out of DC, and didn't want to be out too terribly late, since I had to be up early the next morning to drive to NY. We saw Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. It was a very Tim Burton movie, which made it all the more awesome. It's one of those movies that you have to go in with a certain expectation, and it met that expectation.

We did stop afterwards to get something to eat, since neither of us had really had anything to eat since much earlier in the day. Where did we stop? Why, Dunkin Donuts, of course. We don't have that out here, so I needed to obtain munchkins. I got 2 dozen, and ate probably half of them just that night. So. Good.

The next day was the trip up to NY, which I will chronicle in its own blog entry, most likely being the next one I type up.

Thursday when I came back from NY, I stayed up later than I'd anticipated, considering I had early plans for Friday. With as wonky as my sleep schedule was the entire trip, only a few nights did I actually sleep poorly. Even on the nights when I got less sleep than I'd wanted, I still managed to sleep more soundly than I do most nights in general. I keep repeating this, but it truly was the vacation that I needed.

Friday morning was my tour of the Pentagon with my Aunt. I got up early so that I could go in to work with her, and we spent a good 3 hours just wandering the halls. She'd printed out some information on the Pentagon, and asked me to look through it to see which exhibits I wanted to see, and she had a few of her own that she wanted to show me. All in all, I saw everything that had caught my eye on the printout. My favorite, however, was the pink flamingo. You know the style of cardboard cutout that is a "pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey" type of thing? Yeah, it was one of those, along with a palm tree, just thumb-tacked to a wall in a basement level that my Aunt didn't even know existed. No signs, no description, no backstory. Just, a pink flamingo and a palm tree, thumb-tacked to a wall. Aside from that, the NORAD exhibit was probably my favorite thing.

Just being in the Pentagon was awesome. There were a couple things that she'd wanted to show me that we ended up running out of time for {she was on the clock and really did have actual work that she needed to do, after all} so we will be saving that for next time. After the tour inside the building, she directed me on how to get to the 9/11 Memorial, so that I could see the benches that they'd put in, along with trying to see if I could tell where exactly the part of the building had been replaced. There's just the slightest difference in color, but because the replaced part of the building has been weathered for the last 15 years, it's harder to distinguish than I imagine it would have been 15 years ago.

Once I was finished there, I walked over to the metro station and headed in to the city again to meet up with the same friend. He was dog sitting for a friend of his, of which she was nice enough to welcome me in to her home, so we just kind of hung out with the dogs for a while. Later that evening we went out to dinner. The place we'd done minimal research on Yelp for, that sounded really good, was an hour wait so we kept walking. There was another place that he mentioned was similar, but more seafood-y, that we ended up going to. The wait for that was 45 minutes, but it ended up only being about 35 minutes. By the time we got in there, we most likely would have still been waiting for the other place.

The food was delicious! It was called the Hamilton, and I highly recommend the mac and cheese bites. I got sushi, because sushi, and he got a burger. We each picked at the fries that came with his dish. We each got a drink, I had two, and I was quite comfortable by the end of the second one. Since we were walking, and not needing to drive anywhere, it was my first chance to really indulge, and so I did.

After dinner, we headed over to the National Monuments. I'm wanting to say that it was around 8 or 9 by the time we finished dinner, but it was definitely after midnight before we headed back to the apartment. It was such a gorgeous night!! I absolutely loved walking around the Monuments, seeing the other people out enjoying the evening as well. If you're friends with me on Facebook, you've seen the photos from that evening date. We started out at the Washington Monument, which is still closed for repairs, but it was still really cool to see up close. I think I took more photos of that, from different angles and distances, than everything else we saw that night. The White House, the National Treasury, the WWI and WWII memorials were in there. The FDR and MLK Jr memorials were in there. Lincoln Memorial was really nifty seeing up close. I very much enjoyed the walk around the Reflection Pool, as well as walking along the Tidal Basin. Aside from the weekend beach trip {which will also have its own entry} this night was my favorite night of the entire 2 weeks.

And that's where I'm going to end this one. NY and VA Beach will each have their own separate entries, so as to ensure each gets the proper attention for details. Each will be, most likely, as long as this one. Fair warning.

Until then. . .