We went on vacation!
Well, sort of. We considered it a
working vacation. See, Ben & I have had the desire to get out of Columbus lately (and by lately, I really mean for the past 3 years). We like Columbus a lot, it has a lot to offer, but we don't really see ourselves becoming lifers here and it's just time to move on.
So, we're starting the process of trying to figure out where we'd like to "settle down." Ben's skill set is such that we can pretty much pick the general area we want to live and then work at trying to get him a job wherever that is, which is pretty nice. So, we've decided to start our location search. We started with a trip to Our Nation's Capital, Washington D.C. And we followed that up with an excursion to the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill area of North Carolina.
OUR NATION'S CAPITAL
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| Carper Family in front of the Washington Monument |
Our Nation's Capital was amazing! Our good friend K has recently moved there and really enjoys it and since K is so awesome, we figured if
she likes D.C., then we probably would too! And we did!
We pulled into Our Nation's Capital around 3pm, just before rush hour traffic got really bad. We checked into our hotel and then K got off work and came to meet us. Then (and this was probably the highlight of the trip) we went to CAFE RIO for dinner! That's right, folks. The D.C. area is now home to 3 Cafe Rios! So yummy. It was everything I remembered and more!
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| Erin doing her T-Rex impression. Tiny Arms! |
The next day, while K was at work, Ben & I took the Metro into the city and spent the day going to as many museums as we could! We ended up seeing the Natural History Museum, the National Gallery (West), the Air & Space Museum, and the American History Museum.
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| The Rotunda at the National Gallery |
On the recommendation of Ben's brother & cousin, we also walked all the way up Capitol Hill to eat lunch at a little burger place that is just on the other side of the Capitol Building, called
The Good Stuff Eatery. Good stuff indeed!
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| The Capitol Building |
We also saw the back side of the White House, including the new vegetable gardens that The First Lady has put in. Very cool!
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| The Obama Home |
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| The First Lady's Kitchen Garden |
Then, K got off work and came to meet us to tour the memorials. We saw the WWII Memorial, the Vietnam Memorial, the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial and the Korean War Memorial. K does not care for Jefferson much, so we skipped that one, which we were just fine with because by that time we were so tired from walking so much that we could barely walk and we were chafing in places that no one should
ever have to chafe.
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| WWII Memorial |
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| The Lincoln Memorial |
After that long day, K took us to Chinatown to eat at this place called
Chop't. It wasn't Chinese food, but it was super tasty, and I wish they would expand them to lots of places all over the country.
Other highlights of the trip to Our Nation's Capital included: a sighting of a blue jay stealing a peanut from a squirrel on The Mall, watching the latest episode of Sherlock with K at her swank apartment in Alexandria, seeing what I was pretty sure was a covert government spy get off the Metro at the Pentagon stop (
don't pick up the newspaper he left on his seat!), learning how to correctly use the words 'captial' vs. 'capitol,'
accidentally parking K's car in front of two people making out in their car in a busy and well lit parking lot
and they didn't stop even though we were obviously parked there and watching them for quite some time! (p.s. we weren't watching them to be creepy, we just had to stay in our car because it was super rainy outside and we were trying to finish eating our frozen yogurt. Don't worry, after a while we moved to another parking space.)
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| What would've been an awesome picture if the reflecting pool had been full. |
Any way, the trip was awesome, the weather was perfect, the company was fabulous, and we'd go back again in a heart beat! Stay tuned for Part Deux of our D.C./North Carolina adventure!
