Schmidt's Go To Washington DC

The Miami Heat were playing the Washington Wizards. When we arrived we learned they don't let purses in so we had to go all the way back to the hotel and then return. We got there in time for tipoff. Our seats were center court at the front of the upper level, so our view was actually pretty good. The game was fun to watch.

 We switched our zoo plans to today since tomorrow might have thunderstorms and rain. The zoo here is free (like pretty much all attractions) and was really good for a free zoo. I think the Calgary zoo is better for quantity of animals, but there were some really neat ones here, including a few we don't think we've ever seen: A Pallas's Cat, a Binturong, a Sand Cat, and an ant eater. The Sand Cat was really neat. and so was the Pallas's Cat: A male and female Orangutan each went up really high and crossed a rope "bridge" from one of their houses to another. They are really agile for how huge they are. The lions and tigers were pretty shy. Tina dropped a souvenir by accident into the Kune Kune pig pen and they destroyed it. I did understand a Mexican couple who came by a few minutes later asking "What's that in there? Is it a baby? - No, it's a doll." (the word for doll/stuffed animal etc is the same). It's suprising how much Spanish is sp...

 Tina woke up with a bad sore throat, but we still woke up fairly early to go to see the founding documents in the rotunda of the National Archives. The metro is right beside our hotel so getting to pretty much anything is fairly quick. On the way to the National Mall we actually wasted some time going up to see the DC skyline, apparently the "hidden gem" of the Old Post Office Tower is pretty well known as the line was a bit slow and the Rangers only let about 10 people up to the top at once.  We queued for the National Archives but a group of idiots were standing beside the absurdly small sign that said "Pass holders left, walk ins right" so we thought everyone in the long line all had passes because the internet made it seem like you needed one to get in at all. A bit later we figured it out and went to the front of the line. The founding documents were pretty faded, especially the declaration of independence. Afterwards we went to the Air and Space museum and lo...

As soon as we got to the hotel room, we dropped our stuff and went to see the Washington Monument.  In order to do that though, we had to figure out the Metro. It was more simple than Europe especially since it was in English!!

 Currently, we are waiting in the Lounge to see if we can get on an earlier flight to Washington. Fingers crossed!!?