DC Day Seven

Sunday was our last day in DC. Sad face! 

We got up and headed to the Zoo. I'll be honest; it was packed with people, our feet were tired after being on them for a week, it was hot, and it was a tiny bit disappointing. It wasn't bad, but it was the type of thing that when we got done we said, "I'm glad we didn't pay for that." (The zoo is run by the Smithsonian, so it's free!)  Anyway, they did have some cool animals to see. The big draw was the Giant Pandas. Talk about hordes of people. We did get a pretty good look at one of the panda's though. I didn't think it looked very giant. :)

The elephants were my favorite (I think they always are). One elephant looked just like it was dancing. No joke. The lions were kind of cool, too. There was about eight of them just chilling up on their little hill. 

After the zoo we stopped for some frozen yogurt to help cool us off, and then I decided I wanted to try to go do the paddle boats since we weren't able to do it on Friday with all the rain.  There was a pretty long line for the boats, but I didn't mind much. It was a nice day, and the Tidal Basin is pretty to look at while we waited.

I really enjoyed the paddle boats. More than Joel did. :) He couldn't fully extend his legs, so after a little bit of paddling his legs started to hurt. But he was a trooper. It got a little dicey once when we were on the other side of the basin and felt like we weren't going anywhere when we paddled. We wondered if we were going to be able to make it back to the dock! But, no worries, we weren't stranded on the boat forever. We survived, and it was a really fun time!

I felt like having pizza for dinner, so we went to &Pizza for dinner. You get to pick your dough, sauce, toppings, etc. They make it fresh right there. Think Subway, but with pizza, and fresh dough. It was crazy good! We each got our own pizza, and when we saw the size of them we thought we would have a bunch left over. Not so, we both finished our pizzas. My mouth is watering just thinking about it...

After dinner we sadly rode the Metro back to our hotel for the last time. (We literally took the Metro everywhere. It was very convenient, and we got pretty good at navigating our way around.) We packed everything up and got ready to leave for the airport super early the next morning. We got to the airport, flew back to SLC, and drove back to Green River on Monday with no problems. We were excited to see the kids; we'd really started to miss them! 

We are so grateful that we were able to go on this trip together! It is definitely something that we will remember for the rest of our lives! 

This is at the Crystal City Metro, our stop. We just had to take a picture with it. We were very sad it was the last time we'd ever see it.

Then Joel decided he wanted one of us smiling. Happy faces! :)

DC Day Six

We originally planned to check out Eastern Market on Saturday morning, but the wind was blowing like crazy and it was chillier than it looked outside. So we decided to skip Eastern Market and head to the Library of Congress. After a brief and gusty wait in line, we entered what I think is the most beautiful building we saw on this entire trip. The whole this is amazingly ornate. Everywhere you look there is something beautiful to look at, whether it be carvings, tile mosaics, paintings, you name it. It was just breathtaking. Of course we couldn't get any pictures that did it any justice. You just have to go see it for yourself! :)

They had a lot of very interesting displays there, and they even had Thomas Jefferson's personal library. Pretty cool!

After the Library we went to check out Union Station. We'd gone through once before, but we just got off the train and went out because we had somewhere else to be. This time we just went to walk around and look at stuff. I think they should just call Union Station the biggest food court you've ever seen. Holy moly, lots of food. Joel and I indulged in some seriously delicious Haggen-Dazs ice cream for lunch. Healthy, right??

Next we went to the National Geographic Museum. It was a smaller museum, but a lot of fun. They had tons of interactive things, and stuff you could touch. Our kids definitely would have loved this one! We made sure to send them some pictures while we were there so they could live vicariously through us. :) Adam especially liked the picture of Joel with the Goonch.

Later that afternoon we went down by the marina for the cherry blossom festival. (Even though there weren't any cherry blossoms yet) :) There was a ton of people, a lot of food trucks, and some fun activities for kids to do. After walking around for a bit we decided there wasn't much there for us to do, so we took a picture of us with some boats in the background and left.

We decided to have Good Stuff Eatery hamburgers for dinner, which is what we had for lunch the first day were were there. Seriously, the best burgers!! We were happy we went again!  

 Union Station: so huge!