On Vacation: Obviously Not Live

I'm several days behind in what was going to be a nightly summary of our exciting day's events. Stay tuned, there is more to come:

• Panda at the National Zoo!
• Oh, yeah, and the other animals too (including red panda, cheetah, wallaby, fishing cat, clouded leopard, elephant, Asian otters, but no sloth bear)
• an amazing lunch at 2Amys--highlights include fried rice balls (not quite the arancini at home, this was called suppli a telefono), oven roasted olives, potato frittata, polpettine al forno, D.O.C (official Neapolitan) margherita pizza, almond cake, ice creams and a marsala custard that reminded me of my grandmother's Charlotte Russe.
• National Museum of Natural History with my college friend and her two kids (and all those hostile tea partyers)--sea life, bones, dinosaurs. Lots of people.
• tidbits from Whole Foods, including several new salads--orange couscous, black beans with cumin, wheatberries with kale and raisins and olives, chickpeas, key lime quinoa, another bean salad--lots more than we have at home!
• Pajama tour of the district, with 100s of teenagers in buses all around, but those buildings really are pretty when lit up at night--and we could see all the rockets and planes inside Air and Space before they fell sound asleep!
• Going inside a real castle--breakfast snack at the original Smithsonian building
• Then two rides on the carousel, one of Sis's favorite things of the whole trip . . .
• . . . right after finding and blowing more dandelions ("Washington DC, you know, has a lot of dandelions. They're so puffed."
• Air and Space--loved the Skylab and the moon rover and the Saturn V rocket that launched Apollo and the Wright Flyer and the telescopes and infrared sensors. Drew and photographed a lot. But didn't buy space ice cream!
• Headed to the National Museum of the American Indian (more on why it's okay to call them Indians again, later). Kids loved the water features. We ate a magnificent lunch there: squash and bean tamale pie with a side of guac plus cabbage and hominy and stewed white beans, a three sisters soup, fry bread with honey, spicy pickled vegetable empanada, roasted boniato (and sweet potato) salad, cherry aqua fresca, atole, lime/hibiscus/chipotle aqua fresca, tres leches cake, strawberry corn pone, orange cake. And, yes, chicken fingers. There might have been more but that's all I remember. Less great things to say about the organization of the museum, but we liked all the films and interactives.
• Dinner with my college friends.

And there will be even more . . . .