A Trip to THE HILL

Tuesday's wake-up call came early… or so I thought.  Well… at least the screeching and laughing of 4 little boys along with “Boink….Zzzzzzttt…Kaboing…BapBapBap” outside my door came early.  The rest was a battle to uncramp aching feet from yesterday’s HoHo romp about D.C.  Probably more romping than HoHo’ing.

Today’s plan is to get into town early, cruise through the Postal Museum, do lunch at Union Station and roll on over to Capitol Hill for a 2:30PM tour. 

Dragon Lady and Angie had the chow underway as Chucky herded the boys upstairs for an overly lengthy breakfast.  By the time we had everyone dressed and organized and away from video games, we didn’t hit the road until 10:30… so much for getting an early start.

Chucky and ROADUH had another running dialogue all the way in, with the GPS Fairy plotting a course Chucky didn’t want to take and “RE-Calculating every time he deviated. He really only needed her once in town to navigate to the Parking Garage.  Wonder of wonders, 45 minutes later he [and She] found their way to our Parking Panda reserved spot right opposite the Postal Museum without too many “Re-Calculations”.

Once back on the street it seemed we were too far behind schedule, plus a lack of interest from the peanut gallery, to do the Postal Museum [they barely know nor really care about stamps, pony express or whatnot, While PaPa thought they would really like the pony express stuff… Oh Wellllll] so it was off to Union Station to find lunch.  Hey… didn’t we just finish breakfast?  Welllll, 2 ½ hours earlier and these little guys are already hungry.

Along the way, David spots a Hot Dog-Snack wagon and almost scores his “second favorite food in the whole world”  [the first being Pasta] except Jonathan isn’t into Hot Dogs so we find ourselves in Union Station perusing menus and settling on Shake Shack with enough selections to satisfy everyone. 

Lunch out of the way, it’s time for the slog to the Capitol building.  Slog I say because it looked so short on Google Maps, and by the time we made it to the Visitors Center they were already complaining. 

As we were there at the Instructed 30-45 minutes in advance of our reservation, processing was quick [the reservation line was empty], the “no” reservation line was another thing… out the door.  Now we had time to kill as the Nice Guide Lady at the “Blue Line” was still working on 2:15 and shuffled us off to wander around the exhibits behind Lady Liberty.

This didn’t go well with the overanxious to “get this over with” shorties but time flew, potty breaks helped, and we were back at Blue Line when David just had to go look at something with Abuela and Jon in tow.  Of course NOW Blue Line Lady [we’ll call her Trudy] was ready for 2:30 and of course our troop was nowhere to be found, thus allowing a school tour [36 strong] to jump ahead in the line. 

Oh… did I mention all the school troops? Perhaps an understatement as D.C. was over-run by large masses of like colored t-shirted school, church, Scout, Clan, special interest group of one sort or another, all clamoring for “first in Line space” all over town. 

Yeah, it seems that Spring Break is THE busiest time of the year for School and other clan outings according to Trudy [who should know].  

But Don’t tell DL, she honestly was convinced she was the only one who thought this was the perfect time to beat the crowds, figuring they would all be home coloring Easter eggs or whatevah!

Once we got into the auditorium for the orientation video which, I really don’t remember much of as I was too busy convincing the boys that “Yes This Was Necessary”, we just as quickly were ushered out to another line and issued WiFi earmuffs, 2 of which constantly cut in and out and were promptly changed.  Once Trudy had all our attention, we were off at a small trot keeping close to her so as to not pick up another guides interference.

The tour was, for the most part, fairly instructive, and David finally got into it, Jon, not so much.  He hadn’t gotten that far in social studies so his interest level wasn’t as keen as David’s once Trudy started mentioning names and stuff David got smatterings of in school.  Chucky, on the other hand was in full Awe Mode, as all his History studies came into play and he finally got an Up Close and Personal look at our Capitol Building.

Trudy was most informative [well, that Is Her Job] and she did it well. And just like that, it was over and we were handing in our WiFi earmuffs and being ushered towards the exit, via the Gift Shop [of course]

The boy's Tio Andres & Tia Adriana had made sure we had extra cash for the boys to stock up on memorabilia at each stop and they took full advantage of it to be sure.

Time for Pics of this magnificent monument to our Freedom and the Republic, from ALL Angles.  This meant a trot around to the front.  Ya don’t realize how big this place is ‘til you’ve had to walk around to the front, which offered a magnificent View down the mall and proving that this really WAS on THE Hill.

The long slog back to the car was interrupted with a stop at David’s Hot Dog stand [when he’s on a mission…] and of course, no Dog’s for Jon so into Union station with Abuela for Ice Cream.  Retrieving the car was a snap, waving the Parking Panda app at the scanner and we were off to argue with ROADUH about the route home.  Remember, Chucky has an annoyingly great sense of direction once he has gone a certain way just once, and this was no different.  It was just the Rush Hour Traffic that was a challenge but just as they turned onto Constitution Ave, headed towards I-66, a Fire Truck and Ambulance turned ahead of them.  Fearing the worst [traffic jam] and hoping for the best [following the parade to beat the long line of stalled traffic] they got in behind the First Responders and as THEY pulled over at the “Bang and Crash” spot we whizzed by and were back in Clifton in 35 minutes.  Wellll, almost that easy.  ROADUH kept wanting to take exit 55B, Chucky wanted to go to exit 55 and they compromised at 55A which was actually a longer way than Chucky had plotted.. 

A Quick stop at GIANT Supermercado for STUFF, and Wine and back to the McGlynn’s for a Steak and Potato [Pasta for Dave] BBQ. 

Video Games consumed the rest of the night for the shorties, copious amounts of wine for the adults and all was well in that part of Virginia.

We'll pick this up tomorrow with the trip to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, where the Dinosaurs await Jonathan’s up-close and personal inspection. [This is his whole reason for coming along - otherwise he would have been just as happy staying in the basement playroom on video games all day.]

Ciao 4 Now

Uncle Chuck & The already foot weary,

Dragon Lady