Washington D.C. Day One

Today we flew into Reagan National Airport. The flight was so easy. I can't believe how easy it is to travel with older kids. I do miss the littles though. (Sorry Kate, I know you're not "little." We miss you!)

We rode the yellow metro to the Gallery Place/Chinatown metro stop and then drug our luggage another few blocks to our hotel. The hotel messed up on our reservation and gave us a room with a single queen bed. That doesn't quite work with 4 of us. But the hotel is 100% booked so all they could do was bring us 2 rollaway beds. But with a little rearranging, we've made it work.

After we got settled in at our hotel, it was already 5:30pm so we headed out for some dinner (we missed lunch while flying so the kids were starving). We found a great little place called Potbelly's. We were all excited thinking we found a great little unknown dive until we saw the complimentary map with dozens of Potbelly's sandwich shops all over DC and started in Chicago. So much for the great local spot. But it was still delicious!

We spent an hour or so wandering around getting oriented with the area around our hotel, finding landmarks etc. Most of the museums were closing at 7 or 8 so we only got to spend 45 minutes in the Smithsonian Art Museum before being kicked out. We'll have to go back. It's only a few blocks away from our hotel. We tried to go to the International Spy Museum or Madam Tuseaud's but they were expensive and about to close so we decided to wait.

Later tonight Jeff and I headed down to China town to bring home some interesting, cheap eats for the kids. We settled on take out from Urfa Tomato, a tiny middle-eastern restaurant. We ordered a Cairo falafel sandwich and an Athen's Doner sandwich (lamb & beef) and french fries. They liked the fries! They sort-of liked the falafel and gyro but hey, the point of this trip is to get out of our comfort zone and to do more grown-up things. And I think everything tastes better while you're watching the final four after a long day.

I forgot to bring my card reader or cable to download my pictures. :( I'll add 'em later I guess.

Can't wait for the National Mall tomorrow!

On a side note:

Two Epic and Un-timely Electronic Fails: First, on Wednesday Mike pulled on the strap of my camera and pulled it off the shelf to come crashing down onto the tile floor. Needless to say it no longer works. But we were leaving on this trip and I needed to bring my camera. So I absolutely splurged and got a new camera. So far, so good. I think I like it. Second, in the haste of getting ready to go last night I threw my jacket in the wash so I could bring it on the trip. I forgot I had Isaac's hearing aids in my pocket. When Jeff went to switch the laundry over they came tumbling out of the washing machine dripping wet. We put them in a bag of rice but no luck. So on the morning I was flying across the country, I ruined my son's hearing aids. Thankfully I found his old ones and they seem to be working. When you combine these with the TWO TV's Mikey has broken in the last 2 months, we are wasting some serious $$ on electronics!!