A Whirlwind of Shenanigans

Being the slacker blogger that I am, I have not blogged a bit over this trip to DC. You know, the one I was panicking about many blogs ago? Well it wasn't a bad trip at all, I'll try to do a relatively succinct rundown of the trip in its entirety. So day one started with the flight. I was initially super intimidated about the whole flying thing. I was pretty convinced I was going to puke or something, but in all honesty I was fine with the whole trip. We did hit some turbulence on the takeoff, so I naturally started calling that Spinosaurus Egypticus. You know, Jurassic Park 3 where the plane takes off and hits the ginormsaurus? Anyways, when we got to DC we checked into the hotel, which by the way Marriott's in DC apparently haven't ever heard of continental breakfast or free wifi. It's pretty lame. But regardless, we took a bus tour around a few monuments such as the Korean War memorial, the MLK memorial, the Iwo Jima memorial, and so forth. If I could upload epic pics from my phone I would, but my phone won't let me. We also started our first few attempts with the metro and let me tell you I LOVE the metro rail in DC. It's incredibly well done compared to most public transport systems so I was pleasantly surprised. Chicago could learn a thing or two from DC. So day two we started out by visiting FaegreBD which is a firm that works with our school a lot on different things, and they know how to serve a breakfast let me tell you. We had eggs and bacon and humongous fruit bowls and so on. They were so nice and the day was fantastic in general. We went to the Smithsonian Museums and toured around and I could have stayed in the Natural History museum all day. I love dinosaurs and geology happenings. That night we ate at Fino's which is an Italian food place and it was so fantastic I almost cried. A few of us went to Sprinkles cupcakes and I had one of the best red velvet cupcakes of all time. I will crave it evermore. Day two arrived (with no continental breakfast) and we haunted off to the capitol to get a special tour from Ed Pease, who is from Indiana. It was really interesting to go in there and we met a few interesting people along the way. I got some really neato pics with my camera, but since Laptopzilla is still in Indiana I can't upload those either. Techno fail from the college kid, I know. Another food note, we ate at the American Indian Museum's restaurant Mitisam and it was FANTASTIC! I had the most delicious quesadilla with mushrooms and a sweet potato cheesecake. Oh my. I really need their recipe for those. That night we saw "1776" at Ford's Theater, where Lincoln was assassinated, and it was spectacular. A must see if you go to DC. We walked by the White House, which isn't all that cool from the outside, and nearly missed the train we needed. I actually did have one instance where the director of the Honor's program and myself were sprinting toward the train that we needed to be on as it was about to take off. We dove trough the door just in time. Day 3 we toured Lincoln's cottage and it was cool but not impressive and so I just won't really go into detail but later we went to the Washington National Cathedral and an eventful time was had by all. First, we got to go right up on the front altar where probably a zillion important people have been married over the years, or something like that. Anyways point is we got to do stuff not everyone gets to do. Then, just as we were about to trek up a zillion stairs and look out of the topmost parts of the tower... A fire alarm goes off. So we scramble to evacuate and round up all of our people. Oh, I should mention we had the most amazing tour guide. Her name is Eileen and she is going to be inducted as an honorary canon later this week. How cool is that? We finally got most of the way up the tower later and also got to your the crypt. Even though other people in our group didn't get to do both hehe. Guess that makes us the favorites, huh? That night we saw the Captiol Steps, which I said were like watching Steve Colbert on crack. They were a complete riot and you would be sorely mistaken to go to DC and not see them. They made fun of just about everything big in the news and I was rolling most of the whole show. Saturday comes around and we hit a tiddly bit of a speed bump. Our lovely bus at first would not open. As in the door was completely vacuum sealed shut. 2 hours later...the mechanic had just now arrived. So approximately 3 hours later than planned we finally started the three hour drive to Antietam. We walked around when we got there, it was hot an the bugs were awful and basically I was borderlining on miserable. And so was everyone else. We then went to Harper's Ferry and I think our responsible adult humans must have realized we were all getting near a meltdown... Because they bought us ice cream :). Good job humans. Mine was red velvet. It kinda had no flavor. We had Texas Roadhouse that night, and it was pretty good. I felt kinda bad cuz the honors director kinda got stuck with me and this other boy who kinda are a little more of the line wolf variety instead of his fellow responsible adult humans. But they all got margaritas so maybe that made it ok. The next day we drove to Richmond and went to an ironworks place which was neat and later visited the Edgar Allan Poe museum WHICH WAS AMAZING! It dealt a lot with the Raven which is my favorite Poe poem of all time. We ate at an excellent pizza place called Bottom's Up, at which a few of our members probably had a few too many drinks. I am not a drinker so I cannot really relate to the desire to drink at all. Like I just have no interest in it honestly. True story. After that we went on a ghost tour which was freaking fun! I don't know if I believe in ghosts but I don't necessarily not believe in them but I do believe ghost tours are amazingly fun. Today we went to Fredricksburg and Mount Vernon and again had the coolest tour guide at Mount Vernon. We had McDonald's for lunch and it was gross. Leave it to McDonalds to be able to take forever to make a parfait and then manage to make it suck. As you can tell I'm not a fan. So I skipped dinner sort of and ate a granola bar instead and did yoga. I like to think of it as detox. Tomorrow we go home! Pictures may follow.