I "had" to take a trip to the DC area for work last week, and since the fabulous Arntz family offered accommodations and company at their place, I decided to stay an extra day to explore with them. I had such a good time, you'd never know I worked two full days! {but I did...just to clarify in case any co-workers or bosses are reading :) }
I arrived on Wednesday, but apparently forgot the existence of my camera until Friday because I'm awesome like that. (I didn't forget the camera itself - I carried that around with me the entire trip; I just forgot to use it for 48 hours.)
First stop: picking up the rental car at Reagan National Airport. I have to say, I was a little worried about navigating/traffic in the metropolitan area, but with a little help from the GPS, I did pretty well. I did, however, have a bit of trouble figuring out how to turn on the car. It was a no-key hybrid, so you just push a button to start it, and it's so quiet I could never tell if the engine was on or not until I tried to drive.
From there, I met up with Rebekah and Stephen (former carpool-ie and her husband) and they took me here for dinner:
After work on Friday, I met up with Katie (amiga from my Salt Lake days) and her husband Spencer in DC. It only took me 9 years on the metro to get there (seriously, it was like an hour and a half where I started at last stop on the yellow line). But it was well worth the trip to check out a bit of downtown I hadn't seen before, eat a delicious mahi mahi sandwich, and conversate with great people, here (not my pictures - this is all during the non-picture-taking 48 hours):
After walking around the area for a bit, we took the metro back to Katie and Spencer's {amazing} summer living quarters. They let me walk home with them (past the local marsh - we had to dodge cute little frogs the whole way) and gave me a lift back to my car so I didn't have to ride the scary metro all the way to the edge of DC by myself at night ;)
Friday, Rebekah, Stephen, and I trekked through the Manassas National Battlefield Park, site of the first and second battles of Bull Run (or Manassas, depending on whether you had Union or Confederate ties in the 1860s), and where I remembered I had a camera - woohoo!
During our walk around the Henry Hill Loop, we realized we had a lot of questions, both about the battle and the war in general (were the first and second Bull Run battles really at the exact same spot? how far could a Civil War cannon shoot? what, exactly, are the cannons made of? why were the Confederate soldiers wearing blue uniforms? you know..the usual). We set a date with Wikipedia (I know more now. Still not an expert. Anyone want to recommend a good book?).
Also, I discovered a nest in one of the cannons (not sure if that's a common occurrence or I just happened to look down the barrel of the one cannon harboring bird eggs) and there was a beautiful sunset.
Saturday was hot and humid, but that didn't stop us from covering several miles on foot (or it felt like several miles at least). We started at the Old Town Alexandria Farmer's Market:
After a walk down King Street (where we saw the awesome glass musician in the video below - sideways because, again, I'm awesome), we opted to take the ferry to Mount Vernon and finish exploring Old Town in the afternoon.
It was a great trip - thanks again, Virginia friends, for showing me around!
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