On Vacation: Thursday

Our vacation continued on Thursday . . . .

• Panda at the National Zoo! Of course, visiting the pandas, who will return to China later this year after a 10-year visit here in the US, was our main impetus in heading to DC. And so first thing Thursday morning--2 full hours before the zoo officially opened (though, the grounds are open as early as 7 a.m. with several animals on view), we headed to see the panda. Only one panda, Tian Tian, was on view because they think the lady panda might be pregnant (they won't know until there is a cub, I think), but that's okay. We heard him before we saw him, munching away at bamboo. First he sat up to eat, then he reclined, spreading his treat all over his stomach as he continued to munch. We took zillions of pictures, from in front, on the side, and even above his enclosure. I'm sure he's one of the most photographed animals in the world. But Bud was quickly over seeing a real panda, perhaps not grasping the rarity of it and certainly unaware of the actual danger of extinction. I told Bud we were there to say goodbye to the pandas before they went back to China. "Bye, bye Panda," he said. "For now and for China." I guess he's not the sentimental type! It was the third time I've seen the pandas--first years ago when Mama attended some training in VA, then when the kids were babies and we went to see the panda cub (over a weekend trip to host a baby shower for the college friend we saw again this week). And I still just can't get over how furry and big and, well, cute they are. Mama even let me commune with the panda for a bit, gathering mental images for my panda happy place. And, amazingly, we had the pandas all to ourselves almost until the zoo opened (of course, we went to see other animals too--while Mama and I could probably watch the panda for 2 hours, there's no way the kids could).
• Oh, yeah, and the other animals too (including red panda, cheetah, wallaby, fishing cat, clouded leopard, elephant, Asian otters, but no sloth bear). We spent another hour or two at the zoo after it opened, particularly on the Asian trail nearby. Mama particularly liked watching the red panda climb around its enclosure, while the kids liked running and jumping like a cheetah. But it was beginning to become crowded, we were hungry, and, well, we have the Bronx Zoo so nearby, that we decided to head out. . .
• For 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, serrano ham, 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. OMG, I think this was one of the best meals I've ever had. The restaurant came highly recommended by my restaurant friend, so we added it to our itinerary and were so thankful we had. There wasn't a thing that we tried that wasn't delicious . . . and there were several more things on the menu, like zucchini fritters and asparagus in vincotto, that we didn't even get to try. We'll be going back here. (Though, in full disclosure, Sis didn't like any of it, from the bread to the ham to the chocolate ice cream; I think she was just being disagreeable. Bud liked his meatballs and the ham (a lot) and the strawberry sorbet).
• 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. This was probably, excepting my visit with my friend, my least favorite stop. I was just very, very, very underwhelmed by the museum, from collection to installation to all the loud, crowded craziness in between. I've never seen a museum so full of glass cases and blinking lights and didactic panels--it really looks like educators and designers run amok or something. And it wasn't enjoyable at all. And even though the kids aren't museum professionals, they picked up on it too, not engaging or interacting with any of the exhibits as they might normally (especially because every installation was also a crowded pathway leaving little space for contemplation, at least on the ground floor), with the one exception of the sea life "diorama" with reconstructed skeletons of manatee and penguin and seal forbears in front of a painted mural. Perhaps I was just tired and grumpy, but I didn't like it. I did, however, like my friend and her daughters. So that's all good, in the end.
• 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! This was my treat for dinner--and I'm getting to the point that I know how I'm going to make my own beans-and-grains salads. Sis had chicken fingers, Bud had macaroni and cheese; Mama had a bit of everything.
• Pajama tour of the district: Mama wanted to do the monuments much like her parents had done when she was a child and so we piled into the car after baths and pajamas, around 8 pm, and headed back into DC. The kids were so excited to be out and about at night in pjs. And of course, they spotted the Washington Monument first. We saw the White House (said "white__house" with a pause, as opposed to "White House" as all adults say it), the Capitol, the Mall, all gloriously lit up. The best was seeing all the rockets and planes inside Air and Space, a prelude to our next day's visit. And then the kids fell sound asleep. We figured we'd wake them when we got around to the Jefferson Memorial. Us and 100s of buses of teenagers. It was a zoo. With no parking. We couldn't see hiking them at night in the pjs woken up from a sound sleep underneath a highway a half mile from the monument. Same thing at Lincoln. Apparently, all that up-close parking disappeared after Sept. 11. Next time, when they're older. But we were still disappointed. Luckily, they were too asleep to care and didn't remember in the morning.