After packing up and checking our bags with the bellman, we
walked across the street to the Smithsonian Institute, a gorgeous red brick castle
built in 1855. On the opposite side of
the castle, we made a quick pass across the National Mall and hit the Natural
History Museum. Although we had been to
the Denver version, which was very similar, it was really cool to be in the
Smithsonian. We loved the dinosaurs (of
course) and the mammals. We rounded out
the afternoon walking through the sculpture garden before fetching our bags and
taking the metro back to Union Station to catch our bus home.
Despite our pleasant bus ride from New York to DC, the
return was not quite so. As we boarded,
I though the bus looked SO much nicer because of the leather seats. Deceit!
The first announcement was that the wi-fi was not working. About an hour into the ride, everyone was
suffocating from heat and I kept seeing one hand after another reach up to try,
unsuccessfully, to adjust the air vents.
One brave soul asked the driver to turn up the air conditioning. He, in turn, asked the passenger to open the
emergency hatches on the roof! What?
That helped slightly. A little while
later, the bus suddenly pulled over, which made us all nervous (Yet another
problem? Do we need another bus?), but
the driver was just checking to see if we were all feeling cooler. One stop at a really cool station with a full
food court allowed him some time to actually FIX the A/C, so the last 90
minutes of the ride wasn’t bad at all.
It was so beautiful coming into the city at night with the full moon
peeking out behind all of the skyscrapers.
We took a cab from the bus stop to the apartment, and I’m
pretty sure it was the cabbie’s first fare ever, as he barely spoke any
English, couldn’t understand East (kept thinking I was saying 8th),
and used a GPS to find the address, then passed it despite me saying, “There it
is, there it is, there it . . . was.”
Oh, well. It was a short ½ block
walk back. It felt good to get back
‘home’ and we were grateful that Meher and Elizabeth were up to share a glass
of wine before we crashed.
Tomorrow . . . Dave arrives!