DC Trip - Day 2

On our second day in DC we were already pretty tired - I mean we had done a LOT of walking on Day 1.  But still we were going to do something, the problem was figuring out what.

Some ideas were tossed around, but Mom and Keith decided on Mount Vernon.  If you don't know what that place is... or if you haven't seen National Treasure 2:  Book of Secrets then Mount Vernon is where George Washington lived.

His face is everywhere!

Let's start off with the stuff that we probably should have done differently had we known how popular this place is to visit.

We got there at let's say around noon on Sunday... the earliest we could buy a house tour for (which is what you buy to get on the grounds) was 3:45... so we did that.  It was so so so so so crowded there.  It was Spring Break (doh) and there was about a million school groups there.  In hindsight we probably should have bought tickets online - you live you learn.

Here's Lindsey and Keith waiting in line to buy tickets while I was waiting in line to use the bathroom... Mount Vernon - line after line...

While we were killing time we decided to watch a bunch of the movies and look at the education center and museum.  I will say that if you wanted to watch every video display and movie they had and read every sign for one you'd know a sh!t ton about Washington and you'd probably spend 3 days in there.  They really pack the information in.

Here we are posing next to the Washington family of statues.

Something I learned about Washington - he has no direct descendants.  Martha was widowed with children when she met Washington.  So that little girl I'm standing next to as well as the one Keith it standing in front of are his grandchildren, but technically its his step-grandchildren.

We toured around the visitor's center, education center and museum.  We got to see some movies - a general one about Mount Vernon and Washington, Washington's live, the Revolutionary War (with rumble seats and snow), him becoming President (and not king and stepping down after two terms), and even one on Martha and George's love (aww).  They were corny, but still learned some stuff.  I mean George Washington was a pretty cool dude.

After we did all those things it was around 3 so we headed over to see the house.

So pretty

You might be able to see on the right hand side of that picture a (surprise) line of people.  You could only enter that line when your ticket said, so for us that was 3:45.... but to make things even better - they were running behind!  It was around this point that we decided to not see the house.  But that's okay b/c we already saw the miniature version

ignore my bad face

So at least we saw some of it right? right?  Although I'll never know if that passage was they talk about in National Treasure 2:  Book of Secret really is real :(

At least we got a nice picture in front of the house...

The grounds of this place were very pretty - it's quite the estate and it very much is set up to spend a whole day here.  It was a bit chilly (for me at least) and we were tired from walking around so much the day before (again, I was sore at least) so there may have been more on the grounds to see.  I think Washington's grave is there too.  I would just plan ahead for crowds here if you go and buy tickets ahead of time.

After we left we headed down the George Washington Memorial Parkway to Alexandria, VA.  An idea I had earlier was to go to the Torpedo Factory which I went to awhile back on one of my work trips, but timing wise it just didn't work out.  But we did get food in Alexandria, but before that we stopped at this Masonic temple thing the Masons built in honor of George Washington.

I'm not going to lie... I didn't get out of the car at this stop, but that ended up being okay b/c they were closing up as Keith and mom tried to go in.

We ate at this place called Firefly's it was pretty good.  Mom liked it a lot b/c the artwork on the walls was from National Parks.

Mom pretended to take pictures of us so she could capture the artwork.

After we were sufficiently full we went to Target where mom really wanted to buy Keith some stuff (a broom, trash can, cleaning products) and we got some food b/c we heard it might snow the next day and wanted to have something to eat at Keith's.  We weren't sure how much they were going to get in DC but STL had just been hit with a lot of snow.  This Target in Alexandria was the most crowded thing I've ever seen.  We weren't sure if it was normally this crowded on a Sunday or if the potential for snow caused it to be more crowded... but that place had like every lane open and there was a line at each.  It was crazy!

We then headed back to Keith's place and picked up some cupcakes from a place near his house along the way (how did we not get a picture of the cupcakes?) but the place was called Cakelove and they were delicious. We got six - Toffee Crunch, Lemon Coconut, Smores, Cookies and Cream, Chocolate with Chocolate, and a Coffee one.

We went back to Keith's place where we hung out and relaxed and thus ended Day 2.