16 April 2009

C, C, & C Tour 2009: Water, water, everywhere

I have 2 wet days to catch up on.

Tuesday was spent at Baltimore's Inner Harbor where we went to the National Aquarium.  I highly recommend this aquarium both for it's attractions and unique design and layout.  A great amount of thought went into the physical space which enhanced both the attractions and the actual getting around.  We saw everything from bottlenose dolphins and hammerhead sharks to the tiniest 2 centimeter seahorses.  I love seahorses.  They have to be one of the cooler looking animals in the sea.  Somehow we managed to spend almost 4 hours here.  

From the Aquarium we headed to our next hotel in a town that Greta the GPS has never heard of, National Harbor, MD.   Luckily Google maps has heard of the place so we were able to find it.  Upon arrival we could see why Greta hadn't heard of it.  This place looks like most of the buildings opened for occupancy about 3 weeks ago.  In fact, that is the case for our hotel.   It is a completely planned waterfront area designed to accommodate those visiting or working in DC.  It is less than 15 minutes to downtown DC from here.  There are at least 4 hotels, a convention center, at lease 10 restaurants and an enormous harbor area.  Very interesting place.  Unfortunately most of the time we have been here it has been raining so we haven't gotten to walk around much although I would like to.

Yesterday we made our way to DC in the pouring rain.  As Becky would say it was "bucketing."  We had hoped to walk around the mall, see the Lincoln Memorial, the White House and then go into the Air and Space Museum.  So much for that hope.  Because of the rain we spent a large chunk of time just looking for parking and by the time we did park and get to the mall area, we were so wet (even though we had umbrellas) we just went right into the museum.  As you can imagine the museum was very crowded.  My overall experience was not a good one.  I think Zoe was museum-ed out and that kind of crowd gets to my claustrophobia.  It is clearly a great museum, but Zoe and I were not really able to enjoy it.  Rob seemed to love it though.  He took pictures of every plane, space ship, rocket and flying machine they had.  Most of the time with Zoe posed in front.  I bet if we look back on those pictures we will see Zoe looking less and less thrilled to be photographed.  

The day ended on a good note with dinner with an old friend in downtown DC.  It was great to catch up with her and to sit, get dry and relax.

Today is our last day and most of the day will be focussed on getting home, but we've got all day and the sun is shining so I am hoping we get to enjoy some of that too.  

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