New Year's Eve dinner

Erin and I just got back to our hotel froom from a spectacular New Year's Eve night out. After waking up from our nap and getting ready, we went to the lobby to find a cab waiting outside our hotel. We hopped in and headed straight to Finn & Porter.

Okay, Erin here now. We had an excellent meal at Finn and Porter. We started with the Calamari, which was really good. We moved on to a filet minon for Mike and crab cakes for me. We were so stuffed by the time we left. It was nice to have a good dinner just the two of us. We didn't really want it to end, but the didn't have creme brulee so we had to move on.

One of the highlights of our dining experience was the table next to us. They arrived after we did, and I noticed that they started asking about prices for beer. This was not the kind of resturant where you want to ask that! They then admitted that they had $100 to spend and no more. They order two appetizers and then told the waited that they wanted to drink the rest. They were pretty entertaining! They kept asking their waiter how much they had spent. It was pretty ridiculous! We felt bad for their waiter! Mike tells it much better than I do, so ask him for the full story.

After we left Finn and Porter, we wandered around Chinatown for a little while. It was fun to see all the people dressed up and heading out. We hopped the metro to Union Station and decided to stop in at Bistro Bis for a quick drink. We ended up trying all three of their champagne cocktails as well as a yummy creme brulee. So we ended the night happy. Now we are back in our room, ready to get in out pjs and watch the countdown on tv. Happy New Year everyone!

Sunday!

Today was a really good day. We slept in till about 10 am, then just lounged around for the morning. We finally left our room at noon! We headed out to the White House, then did a huge walking loop around town, taking in the World War Two monument, the Lincoln Monument, the FDR and the Jefferson. We walked back to Smithsonian and took the metro back to Union Station. We returned to the room and crashed! Now we are getting ready to head out for our New year's Eve dinner.

Friends!

We went on a driving tour with Bob, which was awesome. Here is some of what we saw:

After Bob dropped us off, we walked past the Supreme Court on our way to the Library of Congress. So of course we took more pictures of the Capital as well. We also saw a motorcade of about 10 military buses coming to the Capital, we are assuming for something to do with Ford. It was quite a sight!

One of my favorite places in Washington is the Library of Congress. We were able to go on a tour today with our good friends Jonathan and Kelly. It was great to see the building and learn a little more about it. We even got to walk through the exhibt on the St Johns Bible, which we weren't able to see when it was in Minnesota. Pretty cool stuff. Here are some pics from the Library of Congress.

We also waited in the cold for a long time for President Ford's motorcade to pass by. We waited and waited and waited, saw a bunch of cars go by but no hearse, thought maybe it was over, but it wasn't. After waiting some more, we saw the hearse go buy. Here are some picture of us waiting, the last one is of the hearse with the Capital in the background.

We had dinner tonight with Jonathan, Kelly and Dave. Here I am with Dave.

We ate at this great place in Chinatown called Fado. We had really good food and they had Strongbow on tap, so I was content. It is about 10:39 our time now and we are crashing. It was a really good day!

Great Day!

We are having a great day so far. The driving tour was awesome, we got to see stuff that we wouldn't have seen otherwise. It was fun to just drive around and take it all in.
We met Jonathan and Kelly at the Library of Congress for the tour. It was great! I ran back real quick to get a warmer jacket and hat, now we are heading to starbucks and the to watch the processional for President Ford.
We'll put pictures up tonight! We are tired but having a great time taking in history!

Sleep is good!

So after sleeping for 12 hours, I am feeling much better. It is so hard to sleep that long here, I feel like we should be out doing stuff. But this is our vacation after all...so we are going to sleep and relax as much as we can in the next couple of days! Mike did such a great job with the blog yesterday I might just let him do all the updates! A few things he forgot...
Our good friend Chad left us a message yesterday that he is in DC for a couple of days. So we might get to see him soon too!
Hanging out with Shelley and Micah was tons of fun. Micah asked Mike on our way to lunch if he could tell him everything he knows about planes! That might take awhile!

Bob and Barb are picking us up at 11 for a little driving tour of DC. Then we will meet up with Jonathan and Kelly and go exploring.

More later!

DC- Day 2

Hi everyone! This is Mike. Erin is a little under the weather, so I get to blog for the very first time. Hope you like it!

So here was our night after arriving back from Cosi and the wonderful S'mores:

8:30 p.m.- Arrive back at hotel, no luggage

10:30 p.m.- Get ready for bed, call front desk, no luggage

1:30 a.m.- Erin wakes up, calls front desk, no luggage

3:30 a.m.- Erin wakes up again, calls front desk, no luggage, Mike snoring

5:30 a.m.- Erin hasn't gone back to sleep, calls front desk, no luggage, gives Mike dirty look for being able to sleep soundly

7:54 a.m.- Erin wakes up (she was able to get a couple hours in), calls front desk, luggage has arrived!!!!

So at 8 a.m. our luggage finally joined us in our room. This gave us just enough time for Erin to take out her contacts and give her eyes a rest, get ready for the day and head out to the Metro to meet up with Shelly and her kids at the new Air and Space Museum. We took the metro 15 miles straight west to Vienna, VA, which was the end of the line. This was Erin and my first time to the end of a Metro line. Shelly and her daughter Mia met us in the parking lot and off we went. The new Air and Space Museum is right next to Dulles Airport. We arrived at 10 a.m. which was a great time since there were not many lines yet. One we entered the building and got past security we were greeted by the fastest (and in my opinion the greatest) plane of all time, the SR-71 Blackbird (below)

We then took in all the other cool planes in the museum. There is an F-14D Tomcat, a MiG-21, a Boeing 707, a Concorde, and X-35 (going to be the latest and greatest Joint Task fighter plane in about 5-10 years), many missiles and rockets and even the space shuttle Enterprise (first shuttle, but not operational). There were over 200 aircraft that have a significant impact on the history of flight. Here are some more pictures of these great planes! Closed circuit to dad- you gotta get out here sometime soon and see this place. It's amazing!!!

So after spending close to three and a half hours at the museum (yes, that is a record for me at any museum), we headed off to find lunch. It just so happens that while taking an exit we happened to run into our favorite pizza joint, Cici's Pizza. This is the place where for $5 you can grab a plate at the best all you can eat pizza buffet. Erin and I introduced Shelly and her son Micah to Macaroni and Cheese pizza. It's a delicacy that needs to be enjoyed by everyone. Oh yeah, we also had some cheese and pepperoni pizza as well.

After getting our bellys stuffed (see below), it was back to the Metro for Erin and I. Thanks to Shelly and her whole family for taking good care of us and driving us around!

We went back to our hotel to take a little nap, then headed back to the Metro to meet up with the Zumbrano's (Bob and Barb). Bob picked us up at the closest Metro stop and drove us to their place. We had a wonderful time catching up with them on the latest and greatest and were treated to a wonderful dinner. We wish we could have spent more time together (it gives us another reason to come back soon!!!!). Here I am with Barb.

Bob was kind enough to drive us back to our hotel, but gave us a little tour of D.C. along the way. I know for the people who live here, the monuments might just be part of their town. However, I cannot get over how beautiful they are, especially at night. There is so much history here and we can't wait to take it all in over the next 4 days.

Tomorrow we are going to meet up with Jonathan and his girlfriend Kelly. I believe we are going to the National Archives, the Supreme Court, check out some monuments and other things. Erin is the keeper of the schedule, but she's asleep. So I guess you will just have to check back in tomorrow, same D.C. time, same D.C. channel to see what we did!

We hope all is well with everyone,
Mike and Erin

And Dinner...

We ended up being too hungry to just hang out. So we headed out to Cosi, where we were hoping for smores. To get to the closest Cosi we had to pass the Capital. So here are a few more photos, including some of the Christmas tree.

We then got to Cosi and realized that this particular one didn't have smores. We were too hungry to look elsewhere, so we had some really good sandwiches. We hung out for a bit, then decided to brave the night and look for smores. We walked for a bit then found a metro stop. Off we went to Dupont Circle. Dupont has two metro exits and I couldn't remember which one lead to the Cosi. We picked the right one though! Right at the top of the escalator it was waiting for us. We hung in the middle of Dupont Circle for a little while (after almost being run over, I guess we don't really understand how crosswalks work) then we went to Cosi for our smores. They were totally yum-o! We have a picture, but it is on the camera to which the charger is in the suitcase, which are still not here yet (added on 7:40 p.m. ET)!

After the smores we took the metro back to the hotel and now are ready to call it a night! Just waiting for our pajamas and contact case!

Tomorrow we head out to the new air and space musuem with Shelley and her kiddos and parents. Then off to the Zambrano's for dinner. It is so good to be here, it is like coming home!