The return of Debbie Gibson

I went to the Monday night social event at the CSSE conference tonight.  The theme was a night at the speakeasy; a 1920ish jazz themed night.  As everyone entered the area, they gave them either a fedora (men) or a boa (ladies).  A great idea to go along with the theme.  In good spirit, I wore my hat.  I went to the washroom later on and looked in the mirror.  The hat I was wearing looked like something Debbie Gibson would wear.  As I sat an pondered this, all I could think to myself is 'I think I'm alone now."  

Other than that, the night was really well done.  They had a room made up to look like a old jazz club.  Some of the people dressed up in 1920s attire as gangsters or flappers.  The food was good and they had dancers and a jazz singer too.  Much better than the social event at last years conference.  

Another funny note was the entrance to the hall where the event took place.  As you can imagine, as boas were placed on the ladies, some of the loose feathers would fall off onto the floor.  When I left for the night, the entrance looked like a huge chicken fight had taken place.  Should've gotten a picture.  

On the road again

Well, after 1 week of work, I (Steve) am off to Montreal.  I am presenting at the annual Canadian Society of Safety Engineering (CSSE) professional development conference.  My topic is healthy workplace programs.  

I am taking the train up and back.  In fact, I am writing this on the train right now.  I like the train for travel.  Very civilized and scenic.  My hotel and conference at the Fairmont Queen Elizabeth.  It's right above the train station.  Very convenient.  Hopefully, I'll get to see some sights, but the conference will keep me busy.  1.5 hrs until I pull into the train station.  Time to stop procrastinating and get back to reviewing my presentation.

 

Washington DC to Toronto - in one day (revenge of the sleeping butts)

We left DC at 11:00 am and pulled into Toronto at 11:00 pm, it was a VERY long day.  Getting out of DC was not too hard, but it seemed to take a long time to travel relatively short distances.  We returned by a different route than the way down, and really only ran into one traffic slowdown, where my excellent co-pilot quickly came up with an alternate route (which added a few kilometres, but was way better than sitting in traffic).  The views on the way up were equally as spectacular as on the way down.  We stopped a few times to see if we could find S to S for my mom and to see if we could complete operation GRAB TAB for Melissa - we did find a few more bottles of S to S, but Tab was elusive - next time we'll need to know which grocery stores stock it.  We again had excellent line karma at the border, it only took us about 20 minutes to get through and then we were sailing to T.O.  Super glad to be at home in the Kinger 2.0 for a very restful night's sleep.  Now to unpack!

Hi Yogi!

Double duty ketchup container - genius!

Other things that happened in DC

Jennifer fell off her bike, it was a slow-motion fall onto grass while attempting to get going, so no injuries.

Jennifer got carded at the Bed, Bath and Beyond while buying booze (two weird things at once, the fact that they sell wine and the fact that Jennifer got carded, more than two decades past the drinking age).

At one of the hotel wine receptions, we attempted to sit on the four person couch, which looked like it had two empty spaces, the older lady on one end quickly informed us that 'my husband is sitting here' and put a newspaper there to save the spot.  After 10 minutes with no husband, she proceeded to call him on her mobile and asked him to come down and get her as it was 'getting creepy' down in the lobby.  He came down, did not sit down and they left immediately.  The rest of us left in the lobby laughed and were appalled at her behaviour, but it allowed us to chat with several other guests and find out some great local restaurants.

We are giving a shout-out to the couple from Leeds who attended the Tour de France at Alpe d'Huez this year, she kissed Rui Costa and he won the next stage - talk about good luck.  They are excited that the 2014 Tour is starting less than 20 miles from their house and advised we must attend, it is super exciting!

Monuments and Memorials and Bicycles...oh my!

Stepping outside my comfort zone, we decided to borrow a couple of hotel bikes and helmets and see the sights on bicycles.  

Jennifer on her bicycle - which she nicknamed Ethel.

We walked over to the Capitol and biked all the way down the mall, stopping at the WWII memorial, the Korean War Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, the Vietnam War Memorial, the Maritn Luther King Jr. Memorial, the FDR memorial and the Jefferson memorial.  The WWII memorial was impressive, but the most moving were the Korean War Memorial and the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial.

The Korean War Memorial

One of the soldiers at the Korean War Memorial 

The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial

One of Martin Luther King Jr.'s quotes at the Memorial

Stopped for lunched at the Smithsonian Castle. Went and saw the Lego version of the castle.  Then looked at the front of the actual version - pretty darn close.  

Lego Smithsonian Castle

Rear of actual castle

Walked over to the DC version of the Air and Space museum, unfortunately the Leonardo da Vinci codex exhibition doesn't start until next week.  We took in the Goldilocks exhibition, the Skylab capsule display and the Spirit of St. Louis and then made our way across the Mall to the Natural History Museum, where we looked at the Easter Island statue, the megaladon (giant great white shark) display and the Hope Diamond and some of the gemstone display (it was too crowded), I wish that I had not been as tired when I got there, it would have been great to explore the genome exhibit, and the mammal fossil and mammal displays.  Ah well, there's always next time!  

Steve inside the Megalodon jaw

The great elephant diorama at the Natural History Museum.

Tonight we went to Art & Soul a southern restaurant and were blown away by the meal!  I could've eaten their cornbread all night!  Here's our menu:

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s77/sh/befca50f-c974-4748-871e-945da5a88a58/6d6768e9ed9a725b8e468e23b19b890b

Our hotel has been fantastic, I'd highly recommend them.  The George is close to transit (less than 2 blocks to Union Station), they have a wine reception every day from 5 until 6, their rooms are clean, quiet and comfortable and every employee we've had an opportunity to interact with has been super polite, incredibly helpful and concerned that our stay lives up to our expectations.  

The White House and American History Museum

Today was all about 'merica!  We had a lazy start and had lunch to begin the day.  We then walked down to the ellipse in front of the White House to get the requisite photo.  Italy has the gelato police, DC has the pedestrian path police: "stay on the path, sir".  We picked up an historic guide to the White House and the DVD that was being shown at the visitor's centre.

This is my actual photo - I'd say a picture-perfect day!

Next on the list was the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of American History.  

I really only wanted to see two exhibits, "Food: Transforming the American Table, 1950 - 2000" and the First Ladies.  Both were very well done.  

The Food exhibit had Julia Child's Kitchen (the only replicated items were the floor and the plastic fruit, everything else was from her kitchen).  

Part of Julia's kitchen.

In addition the exhibit showed trends and progress over the last 60 or so years.  There were some items there that you might remember:

 McDLT keeps the hot side hot and the cool side cool

If you look closely, Steve continues his trend of dressing for the museums we are visiting..., this time he matches the sriracha sauce bottle behind the hello kitty lunch box.

The First Ladies exhibit was tastefully done.  The dress that Michelle Obama wore to the inauguration looked much better on her than on the mannequin.  I was surprised at the size of some of their dresses.

Jacqueline Kennedy's state dinner dress from 1961and her costume pearl necklace.

Mamie Eisenhower's evening gown, purse and shoes from a 1957 state dinner.

The presidential china sets were beautiful, my favourites were Bess Wallace Truman's:

And Lady Bird Johnston's:

Lego - the universal conversation starter

Due to our early bedtime, we were finally able to get up and out of the hotel by 8:15.  Had another nice breakfast at the Corner Bakery Cafe and Steve got their last reusable lemonade container, darn.  We had decided today was the day to get the car out and venture to the outskirts.  The morning was spent shopping for items on our to-get list and thankfully the mall was dead.  We were able to cross off a significant number of items on the list.  Unfortunately, the requested items from Melissa and Mom are proving hard to find (although we did manage to find 2 bottles of the pink S to S).  When we stopped for lunch, some kids in the booth next to us were very interested in our Lego bags, so we had quite the conversation about them.  The joint where we had lunch had a very futuristic pop machine and had at least 5 different types of Coke Zero - we are in heaven!

As a side note, everyone wants to know where we are from and they always have a relative in Toronto (small world)!

Our next stop was the Air and Space Museum out by Dulles.  Amazing aircraft are to be found in the massive hangar, including the Space Shuttle Discovery, Lockheed SR-71A Blackbird, the Enola Gay, the Concorde, a replica of one of the Wright brothers' planes, the Canadarm, and a myriad of military aircraft.  We also got a bird's eye view of planes landing at Dulles in the tower.  All in all an excellent afternoon.

Lockheed SR-71A Blackbird

The Enola Gay

Jennifer and the Space Shuttle Discovery (it's smaller than you expect).

Steve about 7 feet in front of an Airbus A330/A340 main landing gear.  (Notice how his shirt is about Star Wars and we are visiting the Air and Space museum...).

Jennifer and the Canadarm.

We decided on Mexican for tonight and ended up at a 'small plate' restaurant again, this one was called Oyamel, however this time we were stuffed.  See the attached link for details:

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s77/sh/d6b6af3f-8f22-4a68-abb0-8819a2a87bc8/19c5f4e844fff247f4f00f6877f9bf7e

We forgot to mention yesterday's important licence plate (which was Alaska!)

I'm just a bill on Capitol Hill!

Those of you who remember School House Rocks will appreciate the title!  Today we visited the U.S. Capitol - which was big but otherwise humdrum.

"I'm just a bill"

We then visited the Library of Congress which was awesome!  There is a not-so-secret passage which passes between the Capitol and the Library, which was a welcome respite from another blisteringly hot day. 

We opted to take a guided tour of the Library and were very pleased as Dennis the docent was very informative.  We saw pages from one of three Gutenberg vellum bibles in existence as well as a Mainz bible (these books were taken to Fort Knox for safekeeping when 9/11 happened until it was determined they could safely be returned).  The building itself is beautiful with mosaics, marble sculptures and cool sayings adorning the walls (i.e. 'knowledge comes but wisdom lingers' or 'science is organized knowledge').  Honestly I just loved visiting an institution where books in all forms are celebrated.  The main reading room was amazing, different disciplines and statues of experts in their field were on display (Dennis informed us there is no secret staircase at the librarian's desk for those Dan Brown aficionados).   FYI the library has the largest collection of comic books in the world.  We perused Thomas Jefferson's library, it was definitely fit for a renaissance man.  It was hard to pick what to buy in the gift shop, so many books, so little time!

Who can use the library?  Anyone from young (on left) to old (on right).

One of many who are celebrated at the Library.

We came back to the hotel to drop off our purchases and then headed out on the metro for a late lunch / early dinner (we really need to get our meals back to their regular times)!  We chose Jaleo a tapas bar and had an excellent meal, details at the following link:

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s77/sh/88114d37-24c9-4e58-85b6-303becf41b3a/d994280998cc2b64d99831877914394b

We walked back to the hotel from the restaurant and determined that the city can go from beautiful to scary in one block (we're fine, we just know now to take a different walking route when returning)!  It's strange how empty the city is in certain areas.

However it's 7:20 and we're already in bed - the heat here is exhausting.  Tomorrow some new adventures.

Battle of the shakes

I continue my quest for the ultimate thick shake.  Don't bother with the Shake Shack, it was completely uninspiring. Do try Kathy's Korner in Grove City (drive towards town from the outlet mall) thickest shake I've had from a commercial establishment!  Ben & Jerry's had great flavour, but the shake's viscosity was not sufficient.

Sunday - The day our butts fell asleep from the drive

Having had a relatively late start to the day, we got on the road shortly after 10, both of us finally heading into new territory.  Although we know how large the U.S. is (and live in a country equally as vast) it's easy to forget, so we were both surprised at how far it was between cities/towns.  It probably didn't help that we took the Pa turnpike which even took us through the Allegheny Mountain tunnel which is over 1.5 km long.

Lunch was horrid at Hardee's (terrible value for money) - but there really wasn't a huge selection where we stopped.  We passed over the Mason-Dixon Line and into Maryland, it was a  beautiful drive with breathtaking views.  Finally we arrived in Washington on a blisteringly hot afternoon (>36C).  It was like a summer rush hour in Toronto, but on a Sunday (seems a protest had closed a few streets).  

Bought our Metropass for the week and we must look fairly approachable as people asked us questions at three different points - we were asked how to use the machine to buy fares (which we knew), Steve was asked where the trains were at a transfer point (which we knew from the signs...) and a lady wanted to know if my shoes were comfortable (the jury's still out on that one, I think my feet are swelling with all the heat and humidity so my baby toes are taking a beating).  

Dinner was good at Gordon Biersch - but the cold beer was really the key.  Tomorrow some sightseeing is in store.

I got a kick out of the saying on the Washington DC plates today "Taxation without representation".

Today's plates:

Minnesota 

West Virginia

North Carolina 

Delaware

California 

Indiana 

Tennessee 

Wisconsin 

Michigan 

New Jersey 

Georgia

New Mexico 

Illinois 

Washington DC

Oregon 

Iowa

Connecticut 

Arizona

West Virginia

Kentucky 

Montana

Texas