The beginning of our Thanksgiving break was the beginning of our honeymoon to Washington DC. We drove to Forest Lake to spend the evening with my Uncle Dave and Aunt Laura (and company), before our flight in the morning. When morning came Dave was gracious enough to take us to the airport for a quick dropoff. Rachel's expertise in planning made it a simple breeze to get through the airport. Once in Baltimore we picked a cab to take us to our hotel. Once at our hotel we had no problem staying in our room for a awhile. It was probably one of the more terrifying place we have been just from an intimidation factor. Our room was our sanctuary.
Once we got comfortable we just walked around Alexandria for awhile before settling on going back to the in house restaurant for dinner. This was probably not the best idea. This was more high brow than we could have ever imagined. The food was good the service was insane, but our midwestern lifestyle was bleeding through our napkins. After a bill that would give anyone a heart attack we headed up to the room and ordered dessert room service. Mistake Number 2. Expensive and not even close to the brownies and ice cream we expected.
Morning came when we had our first scheduled stop to the Eastern Market. Imagine a year long farmers market. It was spectacular!
We ate lunch at the market corner burger joint which ranked up there with the best cheese burger I have ever had. Once we finished with that we moved on to our next objective: National Zoo. We navigated the metro train again and found the zoo. We, for lack of motivation, just sort of walked around and stopped at a few exhibits.
We were honestly disappointed with the quality of the national zoo. No giraffes is a big deal. We got ice cream and a fuzzy elephant for the nephew and headed back for the evening. Subway and Ben and Jerry's served us well this time.
Next day brought us to our segway tour of the national mall. I was very skeptical from the start but Rachel was so excited about it I had to play along. After about 30 seconds it was my new favorite toy, and Rachel seemed to like it too.
Our three hour tour was not nearly long enough. We got to see all of the monuments and them some and basically played with them for the tour.
This was AWESOME! Through all of that though, Rachel found the coolest thing I have ever seen; petrified slabs.
After a day of all this crazy we were hungry and tired. We made reservations for a quiet little Italian restaurant Giranio's. I had shrimp linguini and Rachel had smoked mushroom orzo. Both were spendid and I even got to finish it off with tirmisu. At this point we were exhausted and ready for a break.
Next morning we decided to stick to one thing for the day instead of packing in too much. Ford's Theatre: A Christmas Carol was on the venue.
Last day of our stay in Alexandria. We walked around once more tooling around the little shops. We found a few things and spent way too much money. We blew enough time before we needed to catch the metro to another train. We found the MARC train we needed even though Rachel about went into vapor lock. At the Baltimore airport, Mike and Lisa picked us up no more than when we got there. We now were to spend Thanksgiving with them and the little Gabe-let.
It was nice to have some familiarity in family in the area and spending time with them was great. Our room was flourished with candies, presents and champagne. Lisa and Mike always surprise us. We got to have actual conversation, and some much needed Gabe time. Lisa found it necessary to play Christmas music throughout the day and Mike just wanted the turkey day to have some much deserved respect. This was something I could easily help with. We feasted on broccoli cheese hot dish, apple pie, and bread pudding provided by my mother. Mike prepared a spinach sourcream dish that was too good to be true. The market provided sweet potatoes, biscuits, and a cajun fried turkey, If I remember correctly, we ate it all in three meals. My meat sweats were the much needed respect the turkey needed. When it was finally time to call it a trip, Mike took us to the airport and gave Lisa some much needed break time. It was a fantastic visit and we could not have had more fun and would not have changed a thing.
Our flight got us back to Minneapolis and as great as a visit as it was, it was nice to be in the midwest again. We had dinner again with Dave and Laura (and company) and Rick, Sue and company were there as well. It was a great time. When everyone had finally settled down for the evening, Dave and I snuck out for a little whiskey and a cigar. Well, you can about guess how that ended. A little before 3am Dave and I finally came in for the night. Laura told me Dave got into bed and giggled. Rachel will tell you I did pretty much the same thing. We both nursed a hangover in the morning. That afternoon I still managed to walk around the entire Mall of America where were did the final throw of our Christmas shopping. Once home we as predicted collapse in a heap. This was a honeymoon done up right. We packed more into it than I thought possible, and the best part was, Rachel planned it. She can do ANYTHING!
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