Washington, D.C. - Saturday, July 6, 2013 - Eastern Market

We headed out early for the Eastern Market at the intersection of 7^th Street & North Carolina Avenue in NE Washington, D.C.  This is D.C.’s oldest continually operating market, predating grocery stores.  Produce, flowers, fresh meats, seafood, baked goods, fresh pasta are available.  Most produce is outside, the meats, cheese, pasta, etc. are inside a huge brick building.  One of the highlights of the market is a place that serves buckwheat pancakes for breakfast.  We didn’t get a chance to try those, the line was really long.

 

 

 

 

 

Next to the market is the Capital Flea Market with all kinds of crafts, clothing and jewelry.  I’ve never seen such a large market.  I loved the experience but once again the heat was almost overwhelming.  All of the vendor tents must stop the air flow so things heated up quickly, I was glad we went early.

 

We picked out some corn, tomatoes, peaches and oranges and sampled a lot of others.  Maddie sampled peaches at the first booth and at every booth after that her chant was “Mama, peach”.  From the looks of her t-shirt covered in peach juice she enjoyed the trip.

We went back to Robyn’s, napped while Maddie did and then ate most of the produce we brought back.  I was surprised with an early birthday cake and ice cream.  Maddie sung “Happy Birthday” – that song never sounded so good.

Virginia, Alexandria - Friday, July 5, 2013 - Birthday Shopping with Maddie

Since we aren’t going to be here for Maddie’s birthday celebration we took her to Toys R Us to pick out her birthday present.  We were hunting for a vacuum so she could vacuum just like Daddy.  We got lucky, we found one that even makes noise like a vacuum.  When Papaw Greg would ask Maddie if she liked something she would nod and wave her little arm in a circle indicating that she liked “all” of what she saw.  Too bad for her we’ve been grandparents long enough not to fall for that.

Since we didn’t blow the birthday budget on the vacuum we decided to search for something more.  We had been discussing getting her a blowup pool earlier and found one that was less than we expected – so now Maddie has a pool.  What no one thought about was that the bottom of the pool is slick so she’s a little hesitant to walk on it by herself.

We had so much heat yesterday, we went back to Robyn’s and enjoyed the air conditioning.  When Jason got home we had a great slow cooked barbeque chicken supper and then went out for ice cream in Old Town Alexandria to Dairy Godmother.  The Dairy Godmother was listed in National Geographic’s Ten Best of Everything for Families as one of the ten best ice cream spots.  I tried the raspberry sorbet and would definitely recommend it.

 

 

 

Washington, D.C. - Thursday, July 4, 2013 - Capital Fourth of July

I would love to tell you I have some amazing pictures of our Capital Fourth of July experience.  However, I forgot the camera when we headed out this morning!!  This experience is something you should do if you are in our nation’s capital for the 4^th of July – maybe once and with no kids.  In order to get the very best seats you need to be at the gate to the west lawn at 3:00.  We took the metro from Old Town Alexandria where Robyn dropped us off and arrived at the west lawn at 4:00.  We got a good seat on the Capital steps (which I thought was pretty cool).  Actually, that’s a bad choice of words it was HOT!!  We sat in 95 degree bright sunshine for 4 hours.  If Greg tells the truth, he could have cared less about the fireworks, but he sat there because he knew I really wanted to see them and he didn’t complain at all.  I think he’ll probably remind me of that when we are sitting in the broiling sun at some NASCAR race in the future.  Thank goodness, we thought it might rain and took umbrellas so we were shaded a bit from the sun.

There was a pre-fireworks concert with Neil Diamond, Barry Manilow , Scotty McCreary and others which was really good.  This whole thing – the concert and the fireworks are free so the place was packed as far as you could see.  That has to be a security nightmare!  Capital police and park rangers were out in force and everything seemed to go well.

The real challenge was getting back to Old Town on the Metro along with thousands of other people.  I’m not sure how many people you can stuff into a metro car, but I think we might have exceeded the record that night.  We have a lot of new very close friends.