Our train was departing at 8.10am so we were up early, checking out of the Radio City Apartments at 6.45am and jumping in two cabs down to Penn Station. It was a lot busier on Monday morning then it had been the day before. The platforms weren't open yet so there was a huge crowd waiting at the gates. We tried to check in our luggage but we were told that we needed to keep it with us for Washington departures. So we dragged it all with us to one of the cafes where we had some breakfast while we waited to be allowed to board the train. When we finally got on the train, the only seats available were in the quiet car which worried me as I thought we were going have to keep the kids silent. But it turned out that you couldn't use mobile phones in the quiet car, although plenty of people did anyway. We stowed our luggage in the overhead compartments and settled in for the 3 hour trip.
We travelled through New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware and Pennsylvania before arriving at Union Station in Washington DC. Union Station was beautiful, so light and airy and clean after the New York subway stations.
We got a cab to the hotel, the Doubletree Guest Suites, which was across the road from the Watergate building in the University area. We checked in and then headed out on foot to find some lunch. We walked through the George Washington University
and decided to eat at Johnny Rockets. After lunch we continued to walk into town. Sammy of course found a fountain to play in!
We checked out The White House
and the Treasury Building
then continued our walk around to the White House Visitor Center
That's when the sky turned black so we hurried up to get inside.
We came out of the Visitor Center in the middle of a huge storm. The raindrops were huge and actually hurt when they hit us! There wasn't any shelter so we went back inside but the security guards turned us away because we were wet! So we had to go back out into the rain and abandoned our plan of wandering up the National Mall towards our hotel and jumped in a cab instead.
The rain stopped by the time we got back to the hotel, so Alex took the kids to the pool while I did some laundry. However the pool was closed because of the storm, so we ended up just hanging around the hotel room and resting for the afternoon.
We left the hotel at 5.30pm to walk back downtown where we were meeting a friend for dinner at Old Ebbitt Grill. The walk seemed longer then it had that afternoon so we were a little late, but that was okay because she had put our name down so by the time we got there our table was ready. It was a lovely restaurant and we all enjoyed our meal. The server was annoying though. The boys were wearing their Lakers t-shirts and he kept going on about it, saying they needed to take them off, that the Lakers were enemies there etc. My friend told him we were Australian and had been in LA when the Lakers won the championships so the shirts were souvenirs. He then went on and on saying how would we like it if he wore an All Blacks tshirt in Australia. I said I wouldn't care. He was really over the top about it but luckily he only seated us and brought our drinks but we got another server for the rest of the time. I would have had to complain if we had kept him!
Dinner was nice but Emily wasn't feeling well and she went downhill during the meal. One of the kids we were with at the dance competition the day before had a gastro bug and it seemed poor Em had caught it as well. My friend had to drive home to Baltimore anyway, so we made it an early night, said our goodbyes and checked out the statues around The White House before we walked back to the hotel.
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