The Ramblings of Jenn: DC Trip

I'm going to do something a little different here... I am first going to get the negative part of my trip out of the way first, that way I don't have to mention it again and you can see truly how much fun I did have. The only negative part of this trip was that I got sick... I think with allergies. It hit me like a ton of bricks. I felt fine all day Thursday and sometime that night I started to get a headache, which continued the next day. Then the nose started running and the sneezing and a stomach ache (not sure if that's related or not, but throwing it in there). It sucked. Then when we headed back home on Sunday - well the pressure already in my sinuses combined with the pressurized cabin of the airplane made it like a million times worse. I ended up calling in sick Monday and went home early on Tuesday. It's currently Wednesday and I'm beginning to feel a lot better, however I'm still fairly congested (I sound like I'm holding my nose when talking) So there's the bad... it's out of the way!

Back to the good part - last week/weekend my dad, step mom, Janet, and me went to visit my brother in DC. We picked this particular weekend because the Cardinals were playing the Nationals in DC and thought it would be a fun time to go.

We left on Wednesday evening. Our flight got into Baltimore around 9pm. While we were waiting for our plane in St. Louis we had some food at Chilis and I had a margarita!

Been craving one

When we got into DC Keith and his girlfriend, Sarah, picked us up at the airport and we headed to Silver Spring, where they live. Once we got up to the hotel and got situated (I got the pleasure of sleeping on a roll-away bed, but that's not me complaining) we went out for some drinks at an Irish pub close to their house - McGinty's. We had a couple of drinks and then headed back to the hotel. It was getting kinda late at that point (for me at least)

On Thursday we woke up and got ready at a leisurely pace. Keith had to work and Sarah had other plans so we decided to check out the Newseum. With the help of an app on my phone I got us all there in one piece by navigating the metro system and walking - I'm not going to lie, I was pretty proud of myself.

I originally took this b/c I thought they were cherry blossoms, but now I'm not so sure they are... may have been what caused my allergies though...

The Newseum was really pretty neat. While it talks about journalism (both written and visual) there's a lot about general things that happened in the news. We spent a lot of time there, and still wasn't able to see everything. Tickets are good for two days, but we only spent one there.

Outside they had the front page papers of each state. Here's St. Louis! They also had these inside as well. Since I am lame or something I counted how many papers had a cover story about the ferry disaster in South Korea - out of the 40 papers I counted, 18 had that story on the front page somewhere.

They have a lot of cool things in the Newseum, but one of the neatest is the Berlin wall. Here's a piece you could touch.

Dave was here (like Kilroy haha get it? no?)

They also had a big piece of the wall. The West Berlin side was all graffetied up while the East Berlin side was clean.

Very interesting, and something that happened in my lifetime which is hard to believe. Although I was pretty young when the wall came down.

They also had an FBI exhibit which talked about famous events - Gangsters, civil rights, Lindbergh baby kidnapping, Unibomber (including his cabin), 9/11 and other terrorist acts, Oklahoma City bombing and Waco.

Dad posing with a gangster

Next we went up to the top floor which had a fantastic view of the Capitol Building. I used an app my mom recommended to get these pics - Pro HDR Free - they kind of look photo shopped.

Another one of the most interesting things at the museum was 9/11 and it's coverage. September 11th happened when I was a senior in high school. They show a video about the news coverage that day and people who were there reporting it. I cried...

This was the antenna on top of one of the towers

Wall of front pages the day after 9/11 happened

This picture I took a couple of floors up, but goes with the Berlin wall stuff - this is the "Death Tower" which was on the East Berlin side and would watch for people trying to flee to West side. Their orders were to kill.

Another one of the good exhibits there was they have every Pulitzer Prize winning photographer. It was a very interesting room and pretty sad because a lot of those photos show poverty, hardship, war, etc. I didn't get any photos in this area.

Finally they had an Anchorman exhibit. I walked through it in about 5 minutes - there wasn't much other than some props and costumes.

60% of the time it works every time

Here's a funny t-shirt I found in the gift shop...

After finishing up at the Newseum we headed over to close to the stadium. We met Keith and Sarah at a micro-brewery, Bluejacket. It was very good and had an awesome selection of beer. It was around this time my phone died sadly.

After some drinks and food we headed over to the ballpark. It was a great game and the Cardinals won 8-0. The game was REALLY cold though, so we didn't stay too too long, but longer than we originally thought we would.

We headed back to Silver Spring and went back to McGinty's to watch the end of the game and the Blues game. I stayed at the bar for the first overtime, but then headed back to the hotel. I watched the second overtime there and then went to sleep... of course I missed when they actually scored in the third overtime to win the game.

On Friday we were pretty worn out from all the walking and missed breakfast at our hotel. So instead we went to french place in Silver Spring - La Madeleine. It was a very tasty breakfast! During this time we tried to find tickets to Saturday's baseball game since it was a day game and we wouldn't freeze to death. We planned to go to the Holocaust museum that day, but instead decided to drive around DC and take in the sights this way. I will say I never want to be a driver in DC, but Keith did a great job. We drove by a lot of the monuments and different areas of DC.

We ended up eating at Comet Ping Pong. We ordered several different kinds of pizza and it was all very delicious. We ended up heading back to Keith and Sarah's where we watched the Cardinals game and played Heads Up during commercials. It was a very nice night.