I woke up super early today so we could go downstairs for breakfast. Summer had to wait a bit after taking her medication, so that set us behind a little bit. We still ended up waiting in the lobby for the restaurant to open. Once it finally did, several minutes late, we learned that breakfast wasn’t actually included in our stay. It didn’t look any better than what we had the prior morning, so we opted to save our $15 per head and just find something else later.
We met the girls at the dorm and contemplated driving everyone down to the metro station in the trunk. It was simply too many people though, and as luck would have it, there was a shuttle that would take us across the campus anyway. Summer went in to get a parking pass, and then we took the shuttle to the bus station, which took us to the metro station.
The metro was pretty neat, and I think it was my first real encounter with big city public transportation. I thought Disney World did it better, but overall it wasn’t bad. The worst part was actually just the fact that we couldn’t hear the overhead speaker at all. It was pure static, if anything at all. The stops weren’t advertised inside of the train either, so you had to look at the poles outside for every stop.
We got off at the Archives station, and evidently my metro card recharge didn’t work and I had to take the emergency exit out without paying. Once we emerged from the train station, we started walking for the rest of the day. I mostly hung back with the grandmother of one of the girls that came along. Summer went ahead with the rest of the girls. They went off our path to see the Smithsonian Castle. Then we went to the Washington Monument, followed by the World War II Monument, and then finally down the length of the Reflecting Pool to the Lincoln Monument. I was most surprised by the tiny gift shop inside of the monument itself. It just seemed out of place, and very much like a Disney ride.
I got everyone to go down a sketchy elevator to see the downstairs area of the Monument, and then we continued walking around through the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and made a huge loop around the White House. The Secret Service was out and about, and everything seemed pretty closed off, but the girls got a few pictures before we wandered toward a Potbelly sandwich shop for lunch. I thought my sandwich was okay, but it was still just a sandwich.
After we ate, we continued walking until we got to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. We spent several hours there, getting lost in nearly every exhibit. Some were way better than others, and I grew tired of looking at things that still existed today, like the skeletons of non-extinct animals.
As the evening came, we had to get the girls back to the cafeteria for their dinner. Both Summer’s and my phones died while we were on the train, so we had to exit through the emergency exit again. Then we got off at the wrong bus stop and had to walk up a big hill to get to the cafeteria. Summer and I went even farther to her car, where she had gotten an $85 parking ticket because nobody told her what lots were available to us.
We made it back to our hotel, where housekeeping cleaned up a little bit, but left the empty drug bags. We had new towels and a made bed, but the power on the TV wall was still out. I tried calling the front desk, but again nothing was done. Summer was hungry enough to eat again, so we went to a West African place called Koité Grill. They ended up not having dine-in service, so we took that back to the hotel and ate. Then Summer went to bed, and I stayed up late with a bit of a belly ache.
Should have gone with the dirtier shoes.