Friday May 11 -
I left Salt Lake about 10:30AM, I was relieved to sit by THE NICEST man in the world. He was probably 55-60 years old, owns a 600 acre cattle ranch in Kansas and was just a pleasure to talk to. It came up that I was mormon and he got a puzzled look on his face and asked, "wait, so, if you are mormon, what is your husband doing in DC?". Which made me laugh. Apparently he didn't realize that mormons were allowed to stray from the "homeland" :). We both had four hour layovers in the Denver airport and he was so kind and bought me lunch and kept me company for the layover. Probably seems weird to write so much about the person I sat next to on my first flight but it really changed the tone from being a scary thing to being a fun thing. So, be nice to people on planes! You never know when you are sitting next to someone who is terrified! (Unless they tell you, like I would!). Ha.
I got in to Washington Dulles around 9:30 that night. One of Blaine's co-workers (well, not exactly a co-worker...but an acquaintance who happens to be LDS as well) was so nice and offered to drive him to pick me up from the airport. We stopped at McDonalds for dinner and then he dropped us off at the Marriott Bethesda. Blaine had bought flowers for me, which was kind of a big deal since he had to drag them, along with his luggage around DC and the metro all day! The hot tub was closed, much to Blaine's dismay.
Saturday May 12 -
Our hotel had a shuttle to the metro, which was nice. To get down in to the metro you have to take the worlds longest escalator, which was a fun adventure.
Turns out I kind of have an irrational fear of mass transit too. Thesubway kind of stressed (and grossed!) me out. I eventually got over that during the week, but it took a while : ) Our first destination was to Wingos. See-- being that this trip was sponsored by student loans, and that no matter what we did the trip was going to be pretty expensive, we did our best to save on hotels and meals. Groupon has a cool thing in big cities called "Groupon Now" where it posts a lot of deals that have to be used within a couple of hours. So we paid $5 for a $10 certificate at Wingos, and I had $5 of groupon credit, so this was a free meal. And we walked about two miles to get it :). Ha ha. It was literally a hole in the wall, but man, I've never tasted such good wings! The area Wingos was in was kind of a ritzy shopping district (Georgetown), it was fun to walk around and see Hugo Boss stores in really old buildings. I was in awe at how green the city was.
Oh also while we were eating our wings I had a nice conversation with a policeman, and being LDS came up again. Man, if you ever go to DC don't forget to take your pass along cards!
We then walked over to the Potomac where there was a big Crew race going on. It was kind of fun to watch for a while, seeing as how I've only ever seen people rowing in movies!
Then we rented a kayak. When I got in I kind of broke the seat. And as we were drifting while getting settled some dude in another kayak started freaking out, "watch my oar. Watch my oar! WATCH MY OAR!" And I was thinking, dude, I am not in control, you may want to get your oar out of my way. Oh well. Now we have a fun quote (WATCH MY OAR!). Since the crew race was going on (which the guy on the doc so kindly reminded us of as we started paddling that way), we headed South down the Potomac. Saw a dead fish. I had a panic attack because I thought I saw a snake. And finally about half an hour in to our hour rental we made it to see the back of the Lincoln Memorial :) It was pretty darn fun!
Then we walked around "the mall" and just kind of got the lay of the land and saw the memorials and monuments and the white house. Blaine showed me where he worked. I thought my feet were going to fall off. I can't remember what we had for dinner that night -- I think we took the hotel shuttle to a mall and ate at The Cheesecake Factory (don't worry, I only got an appetizer to save $$). Oh yeah, when the table next to ours got their meal Blaine said something like "dang! I wonder what that is, it looks good!" And the girl just turned and told us what they had ordered and offered us some, it was so funny. Turns out they were LDS and in town for a DoTerra convention (DoTerra is the essential oil company my granola neighbor sells for). They were really funny and nice, it was a mom with two of her TWELVE kids. Crazy. I can't imagine raising 12 kids here, but they must have gotten some stares raising 12 kids in Delaware where they were from!
We made it back in time to sit in the hot tub (thankfully!). And I think maybe this is the night that we were with three older women in the hot tub who had taken a road trip together to DC. We talked about the price of milk in our respective areas of the country : ) Oh and I had fun being cynical of the lifeguard who sat in the corner applying her makeup while kids were swimming in the pool. Awesome.
Wow, Maybe I better take this one day at a time so as to not write the worlds longest post!
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