Country Gal Goes To The Big City…

I started this post during the week that we returned from our southern sojourn. However, we were VERY fortunate to have our granddaughter spend last week with us and I decided that enjoying her company while she was with us was much more important than writing in this blog.  She left us last Saturday and it took me a week to get back to normal. I’m just not as young as I used to be.

As always, you can click on most photo’s to make it larger for a better view.

What can I say…I have never been much of a city gal. Visiting DC was an eye opener for me. Oh, I’ve been to big cities (I was born and brought up in the Pittsburgh area) but I have never been to one with so much “WOW’! There is just so much to see and do.

When we were just short of DC, we stopped at a roadside rest. As we were getting out of the car, a fella that, at first glance, appeared to be an Army solider in ACU’s stopped us and asked us for money so his “wife” could get home to her dying father.  As we looked a little closer, we noticed the soldier had an earring, no hat, was wearing sneakers and the uniform had no patches. Obviously, we did not give him any money, but as we left, he was giving his spiel to a little old lady a few cars down. Sure hope that she didn’t buy his lies.

We were so fortunate to be able to visit with our son and daughter-in-law and to have them as guides during our stay. We saw a lot of places but it would take MUCH longer than the three days that we spent there to see all that DC has to offer.

One of the things that I really LOVED about DC was the subway system. It is pretty awesome to not have to drive in all that traffic. Oh yeah, did I mention traffic? I’ve never seen so much traffic in my life and I am really glad that Steve was doing the driving!

Our first day there we went to see the Capital. Union Station is BIG and pretty awesome.  As we came out of the station, it was sad to see the homeless people that have to live on the street. Living that way is something that I can’t even begin to imagine.

Another interesting thing for me was diversity of the population. There are folks of many nationalities and while traveling around it was amazing to me to hear so many different languages being spoken.

I was also struck by the fact that everything is so big. I’ve seen all those places on TV but everything is just so much larger when you get there and are viewing it in person. We visited the Capital and most of the monuments and even took one of our days to visit the panda’s at the zoo.

Would I go back? You bet!!  Hopefully our “guides” will ask us back again soon. The sightseeing was great but having the two of them back in the US AND within visiting range is priceless. Thanks so much, T & M.  Here’s a few more photo’s from our visit.

Our GrandKitties - Haiku and Kio

Cute Panda At The Zoo