Vacation

Last Thursday, Dustin and I headed out east to visit his parents. Jeff and Cindy moved out to the D.C. area a few months ago and we had been anxiously awaiting our trip out there. After a delay in Sioux Falls (thunderstorms) and a mad dash through the Minneapolis airport (not fun), we finally made it to D.C. Jeff and Cindy treated us to some surf and turf that evening ... steaks and lobster tails, shrimp and scallops ... delicious!
The next morning we had a tour of the Capital building. Dustin's sister-in-law's cousin (got that?) is an intern with a Senator from North Dakota and she was able to give us a tour. Very cool.
After the tour, we had some lunch at Union Station and then hopped on the Metro and headed to the Mall. We walked down around the Washington Monument to the Vietnam Memorial, stopped by the Lincoln Memorial (where we got trapped in an elevator) and then stopped at the Korean Memorial. While at the Korean Memorial, the coolest thing happened. There was a lady standing next to the monument, pointing to a picture (there are pictures engraved all over the wall of the monument). Turns out, the picture she was pointing to was her! While I can't remember what she did during the war, I did manage to ask where she was from. She's living in Anchorage, Alaska!


Next we headed down the path towards the WWII Memorial. This Memorial is new since the last time I was in D.C. It was awesome. Then we headed back to the Metro and made our way to King Street, also known as Old Towne Alexandria. Jeff works on King Street and we quickly discovered that it will be a good long while before I can ever afford anything from the shops on that particular street! But it was still fun to walk down the street and look at all the shops. Jeff and Cindy then took us to one of their favorite haunts, Chadwicks. We had a couple beers (mine of the non-alcoholic variety) before heading back to the apartment, which we affectionately called the hotel! I kid you not, their complex is pretty much like a hotel. It's awesome!
On Saturday we got tickets to tour the Holocaust Museum and also went to the National Air & Space Museum and the National Gallery of Art. We quickly discovered that while we had 80 degree temperatures, SD was getting 10+ inches of snow!!
We also walked by the White House and stopped at the Iwo Jima Memorial before heading down to the Marina. Jeff and Cindy took us to a fish market and then we went to Phillips, a seafood buffet. This place was huge and had the best crab legs!! We got home just in time for a cool thunderstorm and lots of rain.