Friday, June 30, 2017

Day 1 - Mamma & Daughter Trip to DC

My first born just graduated from high school so we are celebrating by traveling to D.C. together. (That might sound odd to some, but I told her to pick a place for a vacay and if I could make it happen I would. I raised her well to be a complete museum nerd so she was eager to return to our nation's capitol for a Smithsonian trek.)

We flew into Dulles then hopped onto a a bus to get to the metro and we both looked SUPER stylish after starting our day with a 5 a.m. flight out of Austin, Tx. Beauty comes from joy and we are pretty darn excited.

Man...I wish Texas had good metro systems. Sigh.


After checking into our hotel we walked to the International Spy Museum. This is yet another instance (there have been MANY in my life) when I am so glad to have Kathryn as a friend. I wouldn't have picked this museum but it was really cool. Lots of artifacts, lots of history and we each had to memorize a "character" that we were quizzed on throughout the exhibits to make sure we had what it took to be good spies. Pretty fun.

 This is a toy truck brought into Canada by the son of a foreign intelligence operative. It had about three concealed tiny tools (like a reader for "microdots" - which I'd never even heard of until today - go look them up on wikipedia if you're curious) for spy work. Sort of makes me ponder the family dynamics in that case. Cool toy for the kiddo but it's so dad (or maybe mom?) could spy on Canada. Did the kid sometimes wonder why his toy was missing in action? Something tells me that child grew up with many interesting stories to share.

Speaking of interesting stories....I'll just set this photo out for your perusal. Hmmmmm. Spy work ain't so glamorous after all, is it?

The photo below is an example of how spies and private citizens escaped from East Berlin before the East German government caught on to this insanely cramped way of escaping the communist regime and started examining cars more closely. 

It's sort of hard to tell, but there's someone crammed up in the engine block area and two people behind the driver. What a nightmare. It really makes me grateful for the freedoms we have in our country and the fact that I don't have to figure out how to escape from an oppressive regime. By the way, happy almost July 4th. Let's make sure we protect everyone's freedom, ok?
*shakes head, resumes vacation blog*

By the time we left the museum I was STARVING so we Yelped nearby options and found Hen Quarter (this location just opened 6 weeks ago). This sounds insane but I'm not kidding when I tell you the food was a RELIGIOUS experience. I got the fried chicken plate primarily because it came with collard greens and everything was incredibly and perfectly delicious. WOW.


The food, my friends - the FOOD!!!

Tomorrow we will be at the Capitol bright and early for a tour. Stay tuned!