Trains and Trolleys

{PART II of my vacation with Ammon to Virginia}

On Friday morning (Feb. 27), we were up early to catch the train to go to D.C (Ammon's first train ride!). We had to leave the house by 7:20 (which, with the time difference was 5am for us!) to catch the train that left the Manassas stop at 7:50am. A lot of commuters ride the train, and the train was full within a few stops after ours. We rode on the top level, and Lisa & I chatted on the 40 minute ride to the city. 

When we arrived at Union Station, we purchased Trolley Tour tickets and then went downstairs to eat breakfast since the Trolleys don't start running until 9am. The boys all ordered fresh crepes (Ammon's first crepe experience), which were delicious! It felt too early for me to eat (I'm not usually up so early), so I just got a Chai.

Ammon ordered a nutella crepe. He loves nutella!

We thought the sightseeing trolley tours would be the best way to see the bulk of the city in one day. The trolleys go on specific routes around the city, and have many stops where you can get off and then hop onto another trolley when you're done at that stop. The trolleys are supposed to be about 30 minutes apart on the route, and the entertaining drivers narrate during the tour and give unique information about 100 significant city sites. We missed the 9am trolley at Union Station, so we walked around inside for a bit and then waited for the 9:30 trolley.

The first stop we got off at was the Lincoln Memorial. This was at the top of my list of places I wanted to visit!

There were 3 guards on horses on the front lawn when we first got there, which I thought was interesting. By the time we left, they were gone.

It was cold and windy on this day! I think I'd like to go back to D.C. when it's green and beautiful, because looking at the Washington Monument across the mall from the Lincoln Memorial just wasn't the same with the bleak snow and the empty reflecting pool.

We all had to wear the green stickers to get on/off the trolleys.

Mack pinching the top of the Washington Monument.

Right before and after we went to D.C., I was working on 2 college history classes. I did a report about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. for one of them, and I just really wanted to see the place where he presented his famous speech. I've wanted to visit the Lincoln Memorial for years, and my college class refreshed that desire within me; I was SO happy to finally get to see it! 

I looked at the time when the trolley dropped us off so I knew when to head back to the bus stop after it had been 30 minutes. We ended up waiting about 15 minutes at the stop in the bitter wind before the next trolley came (which means the trolleys were 45 mins. apart instead of 30 mins. like they said). Since it was so cold, we decided to walk around to keep our body temps up. We walked to some nearby sculptures on the edge of the Arlington Memorial Bridge. The gold sculptures are named "Sacrifice" and "Valor".

When the trolley finally arrived, we were so glad to have heat once again! We stayed on the trolley for about a half hour until our next stop at the Museum of Natural History. My FAVORITE part of the museum was the mummification area, for some strange reason. I was SOOO interested in the information and the artifacts that I didn't take even think to take one single picture of my favorite part!

An Easter Island artifact like the
"DUM DUM who ate your GUM GUM"
from the Night at Museum movie.

I saw the giant Elephant that was in the second Night at the Museum movie, and the world's largest diamond (but I didn't think to take pictures of them either). We got held up in the insect area for a while, I'm not really sure why...except some people (aka Quinn) wanted to hold all the weird bugs!

Quinn with a ginormous beetle.

The most frustrating part of our day happened next...  When we had our first stop at the Lincoln Memorial, the next trolley that came was 45 mins. after we'd been dropped off. So, we figured when we got off at the Natural History Museum that the trolley would come in the next 30 to 45 minutes. We were inside the museum for just over an hour, so when we walked outside to the bus/trolley stop, I figured that within 15 minutes or so the next trolley would come. We stood waiting outside in front of the museum for over 40 minutes. It was cold and breezy, and I was so frustrated. We thought about walking down the street to the next stop (about a half mile), but were worried that the trolley would come as we were walking, and it only pulls over at designated stops. The boys couldn't handle the cold wind, so they went back in the museum, and I said I'd call them when we saw the trolley coming. The trolley tickets were pretty pricey ($45 each), and I felt like we were wasting time just standing there on the curb when we could being doing/seeing more. We didn't want to spend more money by getting a taxi or taking a bus, though. After a half hour, I finally called the trolley company to ask how long the next trolley was going to be, and they figured out it would be about 10 more minutes until one arrived. I wish that company had an app that let you know where one of the trolleys always was so that if you were inside a building, you would know when to leave the building and not have to stand on a corner waiting--it would have been so much more enjoyable to spend all that time inside a building looking at more things instead of waiting outside, afraid to miss the next available trolley. The worst part was, after getting on the trolley, we had to get off two stops later to switch trolley lines (we were done with the "orange" line and wanted to get on the "green" line)--and without realizing it, that trolley stop was the company's Welcome Center station, and it was just TWO BLOCKS north of where we'd JUST been standing on the curb waiting at the Natural History Museum!! We could have easily walked to that place, and I was irked with myself that I didn't even realize it was a possibility because I was so focused on looking at our specific orange line route stops on the map. We went inside the Welcome Center (which was basically just a large souvenir shop) to wait for our green line trolley to come, and Ammon found some golf balls he really wanted. Unfortunately, when he was waiting in line to purchase them, the next trolley came and we had to leave without his cool souvenir golf balls (Lisa works a few blocks away from there, so she said she would get them some other time). 

The green line trolleys were the cutest, and we had some AWESOME narrators, so it ended up being worth it after all to ride the trolley, and we enjoyed riding it the rest of day. The orange line takes you through the main area of DC, along the mall, and past the Capitol, White House, and Union Station. The green line goes to the National Cathedral, and Embassy Row, and Georgetown. I enjoyed the green line immensely!!!

I just loved the little benches inside the green line's trolleys!

I wanted to stop at the National Cathedral and take the gargoyle tour, but I didn't realize it was an additional cost of $10 per person to go inside, and by this point, we were all starving (and there are no restaurants right by the Cathedral), so we decided to forego it and stay on the trolley instead of getting off at that stop. We got off at the Georgetown stop, which is an adorable suburb of D.C., The streets and buildings are so quaint there! My sister Tabbi used to live in Virginia, and the one recommendation she gave to me to see in D.C. was Georgetown, and I'm so glad she said that because we ate the BEST lunch ever while there!

We were walking down the street, and the restaurant Clyde's with a cozy little storefront looked appealing. Did I mention we were starving at this point?! It was like 2:00 in the afternoon and we hadn't eaten anything since the crepe breakfast at 8:30--and I didn't even eat anything then! Anything and everything sounded good and appealing now, but this was the best possible choice we could've made. I'd desperately wanted to stop about an hour earlier when we were passing Farragut Square and the block was fully lined with food trucks (I just love the show Food Truck Road Race!). But I'm glad I waited when we stepped into Clyde's! Clyde's is an American Cuisine restaurant with 10 locations around DC, but Georgetown was the original one. Fun fact: the 1976 hit single "Afternoon Delight" was inspired by the appetizer menu of the same name at Clyde’s! It's a classic sports bar with a large wooden bar, mahogany tones, and lots of sports memorabilia adoring the walls. It just had a wonderful feel inside it, and the service was wonderful, too! And then the food....oh my gosh, the food was absolutely divine!  

Our table was in the back of this photo right next to the window.

I ordered a french onion soup (which turned out to be the BEST french onion soup I've EVER had, and I've tried a lot of different restaurant's versions) and the Tommy Melt (a cheeseburger with bacon, fried egg, and garlic on an english muffin). Ammon ordered the fish and chips, and the cod literally melted in your mouth; it was absolutely divine! While we were waiting for our food, Quinn kept trying to take a selfie of the whole group, but he would never smile in the photos, so on this picture, we all tried to make the same face as him instead. It was too funny; I just had to share it!

Lisa was on lent and was decreasing calories every week, so she was trying to be careful with what she ate, and logging it all. She did splurge during this meal with a delicious little liquid treat: a glass of Port. She was reveling in it and was just so happy, so I snuck a pic of her with it! Usually I take a picture of my food when I go to a new restaurant on vacations, but this was the only picture I actually took during the meal!

The waiter carried all our meals stacked on his arm,
it was so cool! He's carrying our desserts in this pic.

We all felt so much better and were a lot happier after lunch! We went back to the bus stop and waited about 15 minutes for the trolley, but this time we didn't mind waiting because we were looking at all the storefront windows on the cute Georgetown street and the boys were checking out the expensive cars driving by (like Maserati's--I'd never even heard of one before the trip!).

Sisters!

We had an AWESOME driver when we got back on; I can't remember her name now, but she amazed me when she was saying all the comparative similarities between Abraham Lincoln and JFK. She was my favorite driver the whole day. At the end of the green line, we got back on the orange line to head back to Union Station, and for that section we had a driver we'd already had earlier in the day. He was bantering back and forth with Quinn, and it was hilarious. One of the last places we went past was the White House.

This was the view of the White House from where I sat on the trolley. Can you see it?

Here's a closer view of it!

When we got back to Union Station, we shopped around some of the little shops in the station until it was time for our train's departure. We sat on the top deck of the train again, and it started getting dark on the ride home, so it was hard to see all the countryside views. I liked that I could see Lisa's reflection in the window, though!

Lisa and I went to the grocery store after we arrived back at her house. Quinn was hanging out with his friends, and Mack had been on call and doing late nights all week, so he was tired and wanted to go to bed early, so Lisa and I decided to go to a late movie that night. Ammon came with us to the theater and we watched "Kingsman the Secret Service". It was super funny!

It had been a very enjoyable day for me! I was so happy to see D.C. with Ammon and spend time with my sister and her family, too!