Zoolights

A few days after Christmas we visited Zoolights.  The zoo in DC is free to visit at anytime and over the Christmas period they decorate it with animal lights.  I think it's aimed at kids really but we went along with some friends and had fun anyway!

A busy December

You may have noticed that I'm way behind on updating my blog.  One of my laptops is still packed away somewhere with all the 2012 photos on it so I've taken a few screenshots from my flickr account which is why there is a bit of a weird selection of different sized photos in this post.

We had a busy month, we put up our Christmas tree as early as possible in December and I had a fun night out with my friend Melissa at a gingerbread house making evening.  

I had to go up to New York for work for a week and as it's our favourite time to visit New York Chris came up and joined me.  He had a great time doing his Christmas shopping and doing some touristy things.  He did a tour of the UN, walked the Brooklyn Bridge, took a ferry to Staten Island and went to the Natural History Museum.  There isn't much left in New York for him to see and do now!  Chris went and queued up on one day for some half price theatre tickets.  When he told me that he'd got tickets to 'Turn of the Dark' the Spiderman musical I wasn't too enthusiastic but I have to say that I thought it was actually brilliant!  The music is by U2 and really fits well with the show.  And the special effects with Spidey flying all around the theatre were fantastic.

Just before Christmas we had a visit from my lovely friend from the UK Abigail.  We went to the see the Christmas lights at the Mormon Temple and then the White House Christmas tree.  We had a wonder around the monuments, Abigail had seen the main ones before but she hadn't seen the MLK or FDR ones and we also took a trip to Arlington.

My birthday is on Christmas Eve and Chris and I decided to go downtown to see the Capitol Building Christmas tree then have lunch at Ping Pong.  Chris had ordered me the most amazing birthday cake from one of my favourite bakeries Something Sweet.  It was gingerbread cake with cream cheese frosting, absolutely delicious!

We spent Christmas on our own.  I spent all morning cooking the dinner and I was pretty impressed with myself when I put it all on the table.  But the second that I sat down I realised that I was feeling really ill.  I think I had been so busy in the morning that I hadn't really noticed it so as soon as I'd eaten dinner I lay down on the sofa then didn't move again!

As part of Chris' Christmas present I bought him tickets to see the Maryland Terps college basketball team play.  We went to the game a couple of days after Christmas, it was really good fun.  I preferred it to NBA games because it was much shorter!

Thanksgiving in Boston

For Thanksgiving our lovely friends Simon and Tracy in Boston invited us up to celebrate with them.  They live in Salem just north of Boston.  Simon is a great cook and he cooked an amazing, traditional Thanksgiving dinner for us all.  Simon and Tracy have an adorable little girl, Avery who is 18 months old.  She is so cute and found a new best friend in Chris.

After a couple of days in Salem, Chris and I drove into Boston for another couple of nights.  We stayed in the Liberty Hotel which is a converted prison.

It was a lovely time of year to visit Boston, all the Christmas lights were up but it was absolutely freezing cold up there!

We finally made it to a Max Brenner's restaurant.  We had been wanting to go for ages but there isn't one in DC so we made sure that we went to the Boston one, in fact we ended up going twice!

First time for brunch, second time just for hot chocolate to warm us up.

It was such a lovely way to spend our final Thanksgiving in the US that we've already agreed to come back again in a couple of years time.

Botanical Gardens

On my list of things to do before we left DC was to visit the Botanical Gardens.  When we arrived I had one of those 'why on earth haven't we been here before' moments!  For starters it's part of the Smithsonian Institute so it's free and secondly it's just a lovely place to have a wonder around.  I would add it to any 'must do' lists of things to do in DC.

White House Garden Tour

In the middle of October, the White House opened up its garden for tours.  Liz was able to get some tickets through one of her contacts so I went along with herself and her mum who was visiting, I don't like to ever turn down an invitation to go to the White House!

I only have a few photos from the visit on this computer - I'm trying to catch up with the blog before I leave DC but have already sent my other laptop with most of the photos on it back to the UK!

Barack's putting green...

Cocktail time on the rooftop of the W Hotel...

Nats Playoffs

In October the Washington Nationals made it to the play offs for the first time in 79 years!  We were lucky enough to get tickets to 2 of the play off games.

It was such a different atmosphere to a regular game.  Normally the place is less than 1/2 empty when a game starts and slowly more people drift in to their seats but it's still rarely more than 3/4s full.  For this playoff game, everyone was in their seat at the start of the game and we didn't leave our seats for the whole game!  It was brilliant game, especially because the Nats won!

As the Nats won last night, it meant we were back at Nats Park the following night for the final game of the series.  Whoever won this game, would go through to the next round.

It was Chris' birthday so we were hoping he got a good birthday present!

The game started so well, the Nats were 6-0 up by the end of the 3rd inning.

Bryce scored a home run...

Teddy won the President's race...

Then it all started to go wrong.  The Cardinals scored 3 in the 4th and 5th innings so the atmosphere started to dip.  Going into the 9th inning the score was 7-5, then the Cardinals scored 4 runs to win the game.  There was just silence in the ball park, everyone just stood up and quietly walked out.  What a difference to the atmosphere 24 hours earlier!

Nebraska and Iowa

Our route back to Chicago took us into Nebraska.  I wasn't expecting much from this state but we decided to stop off in Omaha.  I was really surprised, it's actually a really nice city.  It's obviously not a touristy city but I can imagine it's a great city to live in.  There were lots of coffee shops and nice shops, it just had a really nice funky vibe. 

Our final state of the trip was Iowa.  We drove to Des Moines to Drake University to see a college football game.  It's not a big college so there wasn't a big crowd but it was fun, I actually think I prefer it to watching an NFL game.  And they had the best mascot ever - a grumpy bulldog who strutted up and down the side of the field!

When we arrived back in Chicago we had a bit of spare time to make a another visit to Pizza Due for for some more Chicago style pizza and we also went to the Robie House, another Frank Lloyd Wright designed home.

South Dakota

Whenever anyone asked me what is the one thing that I really, really wanted to see in America, my answer was always Mount Rushmore.  I don't know why exactly, it just seemed like such an iconic image of America, I felt like I had to see it while we were here.

Finally we had the opportunity on this trip to visit.  We were lucky that we had beautiful blue skies for our visit and it was reasonably quiet.  We walked the loop trail underneath the Presidents and visited the sculptures studio.  It was so interesting learning about the history and we were lucky enough to meet one of the Rushmore Workers that worked on the sculpture over 70 years ago!

 

 

From Mount Rushmore we went to see the Crazy Horse Sculpture which is only a few miles away.  The sculpture was started in 1948 and it still has a really long way to go before it will be completed.  

It is being funded from donations rather than any government money, hence it's taking so long to carve.  

Our next stop in South Dakota was Cosmos.  A weird place where gravity plays tricks on you.  The tour guide tells you how it's unexplained and is something cosmic about the place.  I didn't buy that and tried to figure out a rational explanation for it, I'm sure it's some kind of optical illusion but either way it's really fun.  It was hard to stand up sometimes, it felt like you were drunk and at other times it felt like you were standing up straight but to everyone else you were standing at an angle.

In the picture below it was possible to lean really far forwards so that you were almost flat but with your feet just on two blocks of wood.  I'm not looking convinced in the photo but I did manage to lean forward a lot further than it looks.

We were staying the night in Rapid City so we decided to go and check out the town later in the afternoon.  There is a president on every corner of downtown.  I managed to find one of my favourites - FDR.  

The next morning it was time to head to continue our journey across South Dakota but we made time for a must do stop on every road trip in this area - Wall Drug.  There are signs for miles on the highway advertising the free ice water and 5c coffee!  It's a weird place, its a huge drug store that sells all sorts of things and also has amusements.

The weather had been lovely for our whole trip so far and although it was still nice, it had suddenly turned bitterly cold so our next stop in Badlands ended up being a bit of a quicker stop than originally planned and it was more a bit of a drive through tour than a nice walk!

Our last stop in South Dakota was to a Minuteman Missile Silo.  We had visited a missile silo when we were in Arizona a couple of years ago but I had been too scared to go down and Chris had to go on his own.  This time I was determined to do it and I'm so glad that I did it was so interesting.  It was like walking back into the 80s.  Our tour was guided by one of the former missileers and there were only 4 of us on the tour so we were able to ask loads of questions.  I'd really recommend a visit here if you find yourself in the area.