Day in the District

Last Friday we had the opportunity to spend most of the afternoon and evening in Washington, DC without kids!! Thank you Naegeli's! After lunch, we drove to the nearest Metro station, got on, and headed in to the city. Our first stop was Capitol South where we met our friend Donelle who works for Texas Representative Kenny Marchant. What an exciting job! We're such tourists. We were able to see his office and even sit behind his desk. Haha. We were then put on a tour of the Capitol (which was actually like an hour later, after passing through a lot of security). The tour started with a short film and then we walked through the Capitol building looking at the many beautiful statues (2 for each state) and paintings. My headset wasn't working, but it sounded like the tour guide was telling us a lot of interesting facts about the pieces of artwork. As we were trying to take a picture of the statue of Sam Houston, our group left us and we never found them again. Chris did not think this was funny, but I was laughing anyway.

the picture we were taking when our group left

So that was the end of our guided tour. The Capitol building is huge and very confusing, but we finally found where to go to see the Gallery. We spent another hour dropping off our phones and electronics and going through more security before entering the Gallery viewing area. We happened to sit down a few minutes before they came into session. Although we didn't understand what they were saying and it was only for about two minutes, it was neat to be sitting in the Gallery while "in session".

By this time most of our day was gone, but we got back on the Metro and got off at the Mall. We spent the rest of the time we had left before dinner in the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History (and didn't even go through the entire museum). We came to the conclusion that we need to spend at least two more full days in DC just to do the basics. We got on the Metro once again and got off in Chinatown to meet Donelle again and her husband Joel. Joel is a good friend of ours from college. We ate dinner together at a really cool Italian restaurant called Vapiano. Yes I know, Italian food in Chinatown, but it was so good! We had a great time catching up and I felt so at home talking to people that come from the same place we do. I get asked all the time "do you miss Texas?" Honestly, I don't really miss it. I just miss the people in Texas, our amazing friends and family! It's been great having a few of our friends visit already. After the Webb's spent a week with us, I was sad to see them go. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love our new church family! Sometimes it's just comforting to have people around that we've known for so long; something familiar in an unfamiliar place.


We finished up the night by taking the Metro to the Harder's (Joel and Donelle) house in Alexandria, VA to have dessert. It's weird to travel to another state and back home in one night. They showed us Old Town Alexandria and we ate some very yummy peach cobbler. It was a great day!