For my just passed birthday (April 30th!) the BF and I took the day off from work and made a plan to head into the city. It was a great plan, and one that was a bit more embellished than was probably realistic.
Plan A — take Metro into the city, hit the National Zoo, hit the Art Gallery off the Mall and hit the Smithsonian.
Yeah — not a realistic plan.
Plan B took over —
Got onto the Metro and headed into the city. Made it to the zoo after a walk that left me more than winded (whole OTHER blog post, and slightly embarrassing) and started to enjoy the free zoo experience. Saw some gorillas, saw some elephants, saw a red panda, some lions and some tigers (no bears, oh my) and saw a few huge spiders (ick).
Left the zoo and started to make our way back to Connecticut to grab a bite to eat. Took the path less traveled (if you will) that was behind the zoo which took us to a cross in the road — we could either (a) walk to the right and take a paved trail that we weren’t exactly sure where it ended or (b) walk to the left and take the trail that goes thru a tunnel.
Can you guess which route we took?
After making the very scary, but also somewhat fun walk thru the tunnel (I mean how often are you close enough to touch the tiles in those tunnels?!) we found that at the end of that tunnel was essentially a dead end for us. So we took the paved trail (the one we skipped over before) back to the zoo — but thankfully caught some history on the way while we walked along a creek (sorry — no photos).
Back at the zoo and utterly confused as to how to get to the street we wanted/needed to get to we decided to go out the way we came in. FYI — there are a few exit options at the National Zoo. A quick, and again out of breath walk, thru the zoo and we were back to Connecticut avenue to make our way for some lunch. We decided on some Noodles&Company since I had never had it and carbs sounded delightful. Had one of the best lunches I’ve had in a while (again, no photo –= sorry)
After lunch we headed home, quick wardrobe change (the weather had gone from chilly and grey to slightly warm and a little sunny) and we were back in the car to make a special “Birthday Trip” to Carmen’s — our favorite Italian Ice and Custard place. On the way, we jokingly took this photo…
which proved to be too much for Karma to take — since RIGHT after this was taken we did almost end up in the back seat of the Toyota Rav in front of us (long story short…it’s a down hill drive with a crosswalk at the very bottom, no light — just a hold your breath and hope you can cross type set up) — so we made the drive to Carmen’s in silence after that.
All in all, it was another delightful birthday that I got to enjoy and I can’t wait until the next one!
The Yarn Cabinet 