Meg and I were once again very impressed with the hotel. We used the priceline "name your price" calculator and it worked out again in our favor. We stayed at a nice hotel and had a whole "suite" to ourselves including a sitting area with a pull out couch.
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| Our sitting area |
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| The Kitchenette |
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| The King Size Bed |
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| The desk....for all the work we completed ;) |
The next morning after we got up (a mere 4 hours after going to bed) we headed over the National Building Museum which is the site of the race expo for the Cherry Blossom run. We picked up our running bibs, shirts plus a few other goodies at the expo. This year our favorite stand was the Beecause Charms stand. (Their website is www.beecausecharms.com) They make adorable shoe charms that help add a little bling and sparkle to your running shoes. Here are some pics of our shoes after we put on our purchases.
After the expo we headed back to the hotel to drop our stuff off, buy some snacks for the room and head back out this time down the main Mall area. Our first stop was in the Museum of Natural History to check out a couple of new exhibits for this year. Last year when we were there the Hope Diamond was in an alternate setting. This year it was back in its original setting.
We also saw the 2011 winners of Nature's Best Photography competition. Those shots were truly breathtaking. The moments the photographers were able to capture were absolutely incredible. Our favorite exhibit this year ended up being the Butterfly Pavilion. The cost was I believe $6/person to enter (which is quite affordable considering admission to the museum is free) and you were free to spend as long as you wanted in there. Thank goodness Meg and I both had digital cameras with us because I would hate to think how many rolls of film we would have gone through!
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| I had a little friend who followed me around for quite a while. |
After this exhibit it was time to head to our tour of theTidal Basin area (thanks LivingSocial!). This past year we had a very mild winter (and by mild I mean it was never really winter) and because of that the Cherry Blossom Trees actually peaked about 3 weeks before the Cherry Blossom festival. Needless to say there was a major lack of cherry blossoms this year. We actually only found 1 tree with cherry blossoms on it which was by our hotel.
Anyways back to the Tidal Basin and our tour. Since there weren't any cherry blossoms to take pictures of around the tidal basin we started the tour at the Smithsonian Castle.
Our guide continued to lead us around, telling us the full story of how the Cherry Blossoms came to be planted in the Tidal Basin and how many people were actually involved in the process. It was a great tour (done through Washington Walks) and the only thing that would have made it better were if the trees had been in bloom!
(some more random pictures from the walk)
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| The only little cherry blossoms on the whole Tidal Basin! |
Washington D.C. is always busy and always has tons of stuff going on and this particular weekend there also happened to be a kite flying convention taking place. Consequently there were kites *everywhere* over the mall.
Even though Meg and I spent quite a bit of time around the Tidal Basin area last year somehow we missed the Floral Library. Well this year (maybe thanks to the lack of Cherry Blossoms) it was hard to miss. There were some really neat kinds of flowers including some color patterns I had never seen before.
We did plan to spend some time in the Air and Space Museum that night however the museum was closing early for an event. We made it back the next day for another quick walkthrough so I'll just wait and post the pictures from our quick walkthroughs on the next post. We finally headed back to the Dupont Circle area, ate some dinner and turned in early since we had to be up the next day for the race :)
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