The Week That Was

I'm sitting here, with my salty beach hair and salty, coco-nutty skin after a day at....the beach, of course. I'm a little tired out after a l-o-n-g walk with the dog late this afternoon. I didn't expect it to be so hot then, but I nearly wilted by the end of it.

Well, I thought I should attempt to do a little blog after not having been here in a while. I spent most of this week down visiting my brother's family. It was a very relaxing(my SIL is one for making sure we all have nice dinners together and we had everything we needed), it was so fun getting to be with my little nephew and niece again, and we also had private accommodations in their large home. We did the required mini golf and Dairy Queen thing. We don't have a DQ around here, so they know we all want to go there whenever we come down, and ever since I have taken vacations with Mr. F we have always insisted on doing 18 holes of mini golf.

My brother(who is also kind and thoughtful--a great host) drove us all into Washington, D.C. for a day trip and we did the tourist thing to the hilt--including one of those tour bus/trolley rides which took us all over. The museums and sites were packed with other visitors from all over the world(so we didn't feel as if we stood out as tourists, really)and I heard all sorts of other languages besides English.

Here we are at the front of the Lincoln Memorial (with my niece and nephew) with the view of the Mall and Washington Monument behind.

I just HAD to take a picture of the endless variety of Obama-themed(half the display was for Michelle Obama, too!) souvenirs at this kiosk in the train station.

Our introduction to the city was walking into Union Station and what a beautiful place it was!

In fact, I found D.C. to be a beautiful city overall, although the Mall was all beaten up with new paved walks in progress--I got the feeling that the overwhelming amount of human feet all over it on Inauguration Day may have contributed to it's current sorry state. Nearly everyone whom we asked advice and directions from were so friendly and helpful, too.

The museums (the Smithsonian ones-all free to anyone!) were amazing!

We didn't get to visit them all, of course(it would take weeks, I think, to visit all of them). My favorite one was the unexpected oasis of the U.S. Botanic Garden--a cool green, lush and revitalizing place to tour at the end of our day(tucked in a less visited spot right next to the Capitol building, we discovered). So, now I know that when I go back to D.C. I'll want to visit some of the art museums I missed, the Postal Museum and the Botanic Garden again.