Washington DC Day 1

We have had a whirwind long "weekend" visiting Ryan's brother in Washington DC!  (Kyle is finishing up his doctorate by completing a year-long internship at Walter Reed Medical Hospital right outside DC.  He will graduate with his doctorate from the University of Tennessee this fall, and then will be stationed with the Navy in GUAM!)

So last Thursday evening, Ryan's parents, Jason and Sarah, and me and Ryan all loaded up and flew out to DC.  We got to bed really late, but that didn't stop us from getting up early Friday morning and spending the day sightseeing in the city.  It was the weekend of the Cherry Blossom Festival and it was JUST GORGEOUS!  The weather was amazing all weekend!

The only bad part was that I forgot the camera.  On one hand I was almost glad because I knew I would have carried it around everywhere and sometimes you just can't enjoy things as much when you want to capture all the pictures, but on the other hand I'm bummed because my iPhone pics aren't CLEAR at all!  Oh well...so a bunch of iPhone pictures of our trip will have to do.

We started off Friday morning by sightseeing around the Capitol...


Supreme Court was up next...poor Kyle had to work all day so we did our sightseeing without him, but he met up with us after work.



It looks like this next picture is the real Supreme Court chamber, but it's actually just a replica inside a glass box...HA!

Jason, Sarah, Ryan, me, and Lance...we felt bad that Kyle was missing out so we sent him
lots of pictures.  =)

One of the best parts of Friday was that one of my best friends lives in DC and we were able to meet her for lunch!


Meredith told us about this cool place called "Good Stuff Eatery" (I think??) and it is a restaurant from someone off the Food Network.  It was burgers, fries, and shakes, and it was AMAZING!



We left the Burger Place and headed to our Senator's office for a tour of the Capitol Building!

Ryan in front of Senator Roy Blunt's office...

You can just call your Senator's office and they can hook you up with tickets of tours.  It was really cool!  (Pam tried to call a couple of months ago to get us tickets to tour the White House too, but we didn't get those.)  One of Senator Blunt's staff assistant's took our group on the tour.  We even got to ride this little trolley thing that takes the Senator's from their office buildings to the actual Capitol Building when they are in session.




There were some really cool exhibits in the actual Capitol Building Visitor's Center and then we headed to the Capitol Rotunda.  Ryan decided to take a selfie under the huge Capitol dome...clearly the picture doesn't do the dome justice at all.  =)



Where Ryan is standing is where lots of important people (who have died) lie in state...like Abe Lincoln, etc.  And if you notice the scaffolding...they were working on stuff in the Rotunda and we got really lucky because they were closing it down the very next day (for two weeks) to work on it.

I can't remember what this picture is...HA!

We also got to go in the House of Representatives Chambers...it's where the House meets and also where they have the State of the Union address.  We weren't allowed to take pictures, but it was smaller than I thought.  It was so cool to think that this was where so many famous speeches and things happen!



Then we headed to the Library of Congress.  It was SO beautiful!

From one of the upstairs windows you could see the Capitol Building and the Washington
Monument in the background...it was really pretty!

One of the exhibits was Thomas Jefferson's library.

Once Kyle got off work we met up with him at a Mexican Restaurant near DuPont Circle...YUM!  (I of course got to spend 15 of those minutes pumping in a bathroom stall...HA!)

Then we hopped on the Metro and headed back to our hotel for the night...the next day was the Cherry Blossom Festival and we had lots to see!