Visitors! Dave Comes to DC

Dave and I had a great time doing some of the traditional DC sites over the last weekend in March. True to form, it rained. Here's a quick rundown of our itinerary:

March 26: American History Museum - After wandering for 45 minutes looking for parking in the rain, Dave and I both decide we need more time at the museum! Then burgers and peanuts at Five Guys (delightful!).

March 27: Capitol Tour in the new visitor center (which was very nice with plenty of gold leaf and marble to totally justify the $621 million price tag). Dave admires the painting of our Mayflower ancester sitting in the capitol rotunda, and we get a nice education on Representatives Clay, Webster, and Calhoun in the leadup to the Civil War. For lunch fried Saltenas from little El Salvador in Alexandria.


After that Mt. Vernon! Also completely redone and totally worth the price of an annual pass. The Mt. Vernon Ladies Assoc. are pretty well connected if the quality of their Washington movies are any judge. I foresee an HBO miniseries in the making! As Dave commented (several times), George Washington was a stud.
Dave in George Washington's Front Parlor
The squirrels going to town in the pig trough at Mt. Vernon

March 28: Ford's Theatre was also totally redone and now busier than ever. We discoved a problem with their timed tickets as ticketmaster only distributes tickets on the hour, but tours are supposed to take place every 30 minutes. So the ranger decided he was only going to answer random questions, not give a talk. However, we outsmarted him with the question: "Please walk us through what happened the night Lincoln was shot." And he gave his speil anyway (horaay us!). After that we spent the rest of the day back in the American History Museum, which again was just redone. I'm happy to see the Colbert painting has found a happy home. On the way back to Alexandria, we walked over to the Iwo Jima memorial and then visited the new 9/11 memorial at the Pentagon.