Trip Day 3: Happy Birthday

We started off Cyndi's 27th birthday with a trip over to our Congresswoman's office to get a tour of the Capitol building. Sadly, our favorite former Congressional intern had left the city 2 weeks ago, so we had to settle for a guy from North Carolina who had only given one tour before and didn't seem to know much. It was still very interesting to see all the history and art in the place. We learned that each state gets to place 2 statues in the Capitol. We only found one from California (Junipero Serra), but were told that a statue of Ronald Reagan is in the works. The gallery where the State of the Union address takes place seemed a lot smaller in person than on tv.

We had lunch at a very crowded Fuddruckers and then took the metro back over to the Mall. As we were walking to the monuments, it began to rain. We weren't really prepared for that, but it did feel great. We took shelter at the closest building, the National Holocaust Museum. It was sad, but a beautiful building.

It stopped raining by the time we left. Next came Cyndi's least favorite part of our trip. We ended up walking from the Holocaust Museum over to our tour at the Kennedy Center (over 2 miles away we figure) even though our feet were already hurting. We found out later there is a shuttle to and from one of the metro stations so at least we didn't have to walk back.

It was odd to me that over 60 nations had donated materials or even whole rooms to help build the Kennedy Center. There is a free concert there 365 days a year. The day we were there it was some folk/hiphop combo band. I wasn't too impressed until they played Biz Markie's "Just a Friend" as their soundcheck song. It made me want to stay, but we were both tired from all the walking so we decided to get food and crash instead.

We had dinner at Capitol City Brewery which was by our hotel. I tried the Prohibition Porter which I loved, though Cyndi thought it was as nasty as any other beer. We made a quick trip to Chinatown to grab some sodas and snacks for the room, and then settled in to watch Dog the Bounty Hunter and LA Ink.