Tag: Vacation

My flight didn’t leave until 5:30 pm and Sara nicely offered to drive me to the airport which meant we had time to do a bit more sightseeing. Jess came along too. We took a trip to Oxon Hill Farm where we wandered a bit and had a chance to take this senior portrait.
Here we are violating the rule “don’t touch any farm animals.” I thought it was a dumb rule.
Post farm, we drove into Baltimore because Jess heard that the Pizza was quite good at BOP Brick Oven Pizza. It was, but you know what else was good? The gelato shop down the street. I’ve not had gelato before–figuring that if you can have ice cream, why have gelato? Today I found my answer. It was de-lic-ious! Pitango gelato. Go there if you can. I had chocolate noir and creme fraishe which I recommend.
While in the gelato shop Sara saw a woman with a great hat. As we wandered through the shopping area I spied the very same hat in a hat store. We went in to look at the various great hats and chatted with the clerk, who was much nicer than the clerk in the clothes shop down the street who ignored us, which is why I don’t like to go into fancy clothes shops, aside from the fact that they don’t make clothing in my size. Anyway, this clerk was quite friendly and Sara bought a hat. “Would you like to wear it,” he asked, “so others can see it and come in here just as you did?” he asked. She said yes and she did.

On our way to the airport, we saw this billboard. I really liked what I saw of Baltimore and I would like to explore it more someday.
Because my navigation skills are good, but not superb, we got to drive through a good chunk of Baltimore. This was okay in my book because I wasn’t really excited about getting to the airport. We also got to play Sara’s “identify the denomination of the church” game which I’m not so good at, but is fun. We eventually got to the airport and posed for one last picture, with Sara in her new hat. Fetching, isn’t it?
I then entered the hell of airports, as evidenced by this incident. I was waiting in a line that was not moving and witnessed a woman in an American Airlines uniform, with an American Airlines lanyard and American Airlines ID tell a man, “I would love to help you, but I don’t work for American Airlines.”

I hate airlines.

So if someone could get to work on that transponder, I would be ever so happy.

Minus the airplanes it was a great trip. I came home proud to be an American.

After our long day and late night, I was happy that St Paul’s K street’s solemn mass isn’t until after 11:00. We went and I enjoyed the pageantry of the service. Post church we met up with Sara’s sister Jess and went to Chinatown and had “Fresh Noodle Made on the Spot.”
I met up with Jenna at The Building Museum. I was pretty excited to see Portland was featured in the Green Community exhibit. Oh look! We’re even in the picture on this page of the website. There was also a great exhibit about storefront churches.

I bid goodbye to Jenna and decided to take another attempt at the National Museum of the American Indian. On the way, I took this picture of the capitol.
I love the beauty of the American Indian museum’s building. All the undulating lines make it interesting to photograph and fun to look at. You can see more pictures by scrolling down to the bottom of this link.
I never thought I would say this, but I was pretty museumed out. I went to look at the food court, which I heard was fabulous and which looked delicious, but I was still full from “Fresh Noodle.” I wandered through two gift shops buying some last souvenirs. Then I wandered across the exhibit “Ramp it Up” about the skateboarding culture in Native America. Because I have always had a soft spot in my heart for skaters, I loved this exhibit.
I took the Metro back to Sara & Shawn’s and I entirely checked out, missed my stop by a couple of stops and had to double back. That has never happened to me on any public transportation system. Ever. I was pretty tired. We (S&S along with Jess) lounged around a bit and then went to see Vertigo at this Diner. Both Sara and I were thinking “Diner in front, movie theater in back,” but no, there was not theater, just a small screen and a projector in enclosed deck out front. When it got time for the movie, they loaded it up and turned on the sound. It was kind of bizarre. But fun. I’d seen the movie before, but still gasped in surprise as the nun rounded the corner at the end.

It was a good last full day of my trip.

We (that would be Shawn, Sara and myself) started today with the parade. Always a good start to a day, in my opinion. In the parade there were many different people of many different ethnicities in many different traditional costumes as below. There were marching bands. See Sara’s write up of the day to hear about our favorite marching band which we also ran across later in the evening enjoying the fireworks on the mall. You can also see them at the parade in this link. They were great!

The parade itself was interesting, but the spectators were very silent. It was kind of weird.
After the parade, we walked back to St. Paul’s K Street, where we had parked and picked up our picnic lunch. We walked over to the Kennedy Center, where they have nice picnic tables that anyone can sit at, and had our 4th of July feast. You are looking at a BLT, beet and goat cheese salad, potato salad and a delicious broccoli walnut salad. Dessert was blueberry peach cobbler and whipped cream. Yummy! Sara and Shawn need to move to Portland so Sara and I can cook for each other.
We wandered down through the Folklife Festival towards the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian and arrived just at closing time. We wandered back toward the Washington Monument. I took this picture, because in DC, they cleverly use buses to block off roads during events. Then, when the event is over, they can just put the buses into circulation. Genius.
We got to the Monument pretty early and just sat and chilled out for awhile. There were naps taken by some of us, and a lot of people watching happened. Sara and I went to find food at some point, but the lines were very, very long so we abstained. We took this picture of me in front of the monument. We heard an awful band play a concert. I noticed that certain “I’m a patriot sacrificing for my country” songs are a bit whiny. They seem like they are all proud, but underneath you can hear the whine.
Eventually darkness fell and I got this picture of the monument. The fireworks started. We were dazzled. Then came the walk back to the car and the very tricky maneuver that bypassed the traffic and got us home in minutes instead of hours.
It was a lovely fourth!