DC in 24

Last weekend, we were invited to spend the weekend in Washington, DC with our good friends, Hope and Bobby. When I say weekend, I mean 24 hours. We drove up early Saturday morning, spent the whole day there, and came home Sunday afternoon. We had so much fun! I guess it was kind of a last minute get-away for Lee and I and Hope paid for the room as a gift! That girl gets the best gifts! For my wedding shower she gave me a massage!! (the wedding shower post is coming soon..I have to get the rest of the pictures from my cousin in-law, Ashley)We stayed at the Fairfax on embassy row.



It had all the ambiance of DC. It was in the area of Dupont..and was one street over from where my mom used to live back in her younger days! She shared an apartment with girlfriends and worked for the FBI! How cool is that? We stayed next to the Embassy of Indonesia which I thought was totally gorgeous so I snapped this shot..I wondered though, why couldn't this international embassy afford central air?



I have been to DC a few times, but the last time I was there, I was 12. SO, I was very excited to go back and see all the sites. One of my number one goals was to go to the National Zoo. I went once when I was really little, maybe 5 or 6. We took the metro



from Dupont to Shady Grove and had lunch at a great little outdoor cafe. The food was amazing..I don't think we had a bad meal the entire trip. We walked several blocks up to the zoo. It was really hot that day so we immediatly ducked into the gift shop for some maps and air conditioning to recover a bit. We managed to find our way through the whole zoo...it was so much fun! I'm so glad we got to see the Panda, as I remember that from when I was a little girl, and I loved seeing the baby gorilla! I love animals.






I'm very impressed with the zoo for it to be free to the public. We saw Lions and Tigers and Sloth bears, oh my! After the zoo, we walked back towards the metro and stopped by a little Irish pub to wind down our day with a couple of beers. We headed back to the hotel and got ready for dinner. We headed out again in Dupont



and found a fabulous Italian restaurant (Hope wanted Italian..great idea!) I can't even explain how fabulous the food was..so I wont! But, here is a picture of the four of us after our bellies were completely satisfied!



After dinner, we made our way back to the metro to head down to the Smithsonian and National Mall. My ONLY regret is that we would've seen the monuments during the day so that I could get better pictures! They were lit up really well for me to see..but with the camera, not so much. Hope and I plan to go back in the fall when it's not so hot and spend the day there and do some shopping :) Maybe then, I'll get some better pictures. We started at the Washington Monument,







made our way to the WW2 memorial and then the Lincoln Memorial.







Lee had never been to the Lincoln memorial so that was a priority. Don't you love how Hope chopped off Lincoln's head in that picture? At this point my feet felt like they were going to fall off! We never made it to the Jefferson memorial but we'd all been there before. By this point it was mid-nite so we caught a cab and asked him to drive us over to the white House for a quick photo shoot. He drove us as close as he could, but all the roads were blocked for an event. We saw it from a distance, but it wasn't close enough to take a pic in the dark so we didn't manage to catch that one. Lee was excited to see it even a little, because he has never seen the white house! We made it back to the hotel around 1am..way past my bedtime, and it was lights out. The next day we walked a few blocks and had brunch at Scion. It was YUUUUUMMMMY. We went back to the Fairfax and packed our stuff and the valet brought our car around 24 hours to the MINUTE we arrived. Hence the reason this post is entitled DC in 24. We had a great time with our best buds and can't wait to hang out again! I guess I'll be seeing Hope next weekend at my bachelorette party! :) I love you, best friend :)