D.C. Day 1: Taxation Without Representation

At least, that's what all the license plates say...

We landed in D.C. early, before noon. Since 9-11, everybody flying into D.C has to remain in their seats for the last half hour before the plane crosses into the District of Columbia limits, the pilot and flight attendants threatening to divert the plane to another airport if someone got up to go to the bathroom during the last part of the flight.

Thank God we all had comfortable walking shoes, because we did the D.C. portion of our trip sans automobile, and walking was what this trip was all about. We checked into our hotel, then immediately set out walking.

Our first stop was the White House. Just as we arrived there it started to rain, but despite the fact that we had only one umbrella for the four of us and no waterproof jackets (next time we'll be smarter and bring our parkas), we kept on going.

We decided that we should probably save all our visits to the monuments for a day with better weather, and set off to the D.C. Visitor's Bureau for some maps and some clue of how to go places without a car.

With maps in hand, we found our way to the Smithsonian Museums, where we decided to visit the Hirschhorn Museum of Modern Art. We've never taken our kids to a modern art museum before.

All of us liked this brick guy, called the "Kiln Man".

Lots of the stuff was beyond weird and Doug kept commenting that he could make stuff like this. Sean liked the huge hanging thing made of coat hangers.

Our very favorite was this sculpture of this really big man, called "The Big Man".

The kids spent a lot of time trying to figure out how they made him so realistic.

I walked into this huge room devoted to this painting, and there was Sean laid out on the bench. I think we walked at least 4 or 5 miles on Friday, so I guess he was entitled to a rest.

We walked another mile and found a place to eat with good food and reasonable prices, the Capitol City Brewing Company, where we ate 4 out of the 5 nights we were there because we don't know the city at all and good restaurants with affordable prices didn't seem to be abundant.

The good thing about all the walking was that we were bone tired by the time we got to bed and with Steven's clean scans under our belts, we slept like babies.

To be continued...

- Kathleen