DAY 1 - D.C.

A week ago today, Katie flew out to visit me in the east coast. Around noon, I took the rest of the day off and went to Baltimore to pick her up from the airport. From there, we journeyed 45 minutes back to my place and proceeded to take a power nap. After that, we ate at Milano’s and grabbed a couple of tasty calzones. We then moseyed along to Pentagon City Mall (which is just outside my apartment), went through it and down the escalators to the Metro station. Here, I taught Katie how to use the subway which she figured out very easily.
Click here for a clearer image: http://www.rand.org/images/washington_metromap.gif

We then hopped on the Yellow Line and headed from Pentagon City to L’Enfant Plaza where we got off and explored. Rain started to come down, but it was never more than a heavy drizzle. We ended up at the National Mall (the long park that sits between the Washington Monument and the Capitol Building). To spare us walking, we decided that since we were in the middle of the National Mall, we didn’t want to walk all the way to the Capitol Building and then all the way back to the Monument.

So we decided to just walk towards the Monument. When we got there, we rested a bit as we saw the White House and the Lincoln Memorial from a distance. We then went towards the White House, but again to spare walking, we didn’t go all the way up to it; we simply grabbed a street shot. From there we moved towards the Lincoln Memorial (2nd picture below) with a pit stop at the World War II Memorial (1st picture below). We then walked near the reflecting pool, all the way to Lincoln Memorial. By this time, our feet started to hurt. Katie was walking in her boots, too. Ouch! At least the rain stopped by this point.

From there we decided to walk across the Arlington Memorial Bridge (last picture below) which was a lot longer than it looked. We got to the entrance of Arlington Cemetery, but decided to hop the blue line subway from Arlington Cemetery back to Pentagon City. We got home and relaxed for a moment as we awaited the blood to go back to our legs. We were beat. Per Kathryn’s suggestion, Katie and I then jumped in my car and drove about 3 miles south to a restaurant called Las Guapas. It was situated in a cool little area, and it totally reminded me of Cactus Restaurant in Kirkland and that whole area. We both ate some amazing carne. Out of this world good. We also had some jumbo margaritas which were delish as well. After dinner, we headed home and watched TV in bed. We watched a bit of The Office as well as the new show The Community. Katie fell asleep. The next two hours that she was asleep, I was trying to figure out how to play our wedding video on her laptop. MindCastle uploaded the raw video footage onto an external hard drive we provided them. Katie brought the hard drive to D.C., but it wasn’t playing the video. So I spent a few hours on it, but nothing worked. I even called Casey from MindCastle, and his suggestions, which I had already toyed around with, didn’t work. So we’ll see it when we get back apparently. Also earlier that day, Katie gave me a shirt she bought in Seattle, and she also gave me a late birthday present from Casey. It was the full season of History Channel’s “The Universe.” I was super stoked about this because I’m obsessed with the stars and planets, so I’ve been watching several episodes a day. Amazing!! Anyway, that pretty much recaps our journey on day 1.

To view all pictures from the trip with captions, visit http://www2.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=2107628009/a=70595232_70595232/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish/