With my ridiculously large PTO bucket at work, I was able to schedule another big vacation of about 2 weeks.  Amy and I decided at the beginning of the year that we were going to travel to the east coast and hit up her home turf (Virginia Beach), Washington D.C., Williamsburg, and other areas along the way which we fancied.

We flew the cheapest of cheap flights that we could w/out taking an inordinate amount of time to reach our destination.  This meant we flew a red eye from SeaTac, WA into Dulles in D.C., then a smaller charter from Dulles into Norfolk.  Let’s just say that the Airbus from SeaTac to Dulles was HORRIBLE!  It was one of the most uncomfortable flights I have ever been on.  I could have dealt with the severe lack of leg room in my veal stall seat, but why in the world did it feel like 80 degrees in the cabin during the entire flight?  It was so hot in there that I couldn’t use my neck pillow (due to a profusely sweating neck).  Needless to say I didn’t get much sleep. At least I was excited enough to only be mildy annoyed: I was looking forward to the trip so much!

Norfolk airport was just as I had remembered it. I was shocked at how well I had paid attention to the place during my last trip (which was a red eye flight with no sleep after having been at work the previous day… I was exhausted!).  The weather was warm, a bit cloudy, and it felt oh so good to sit back and relax our travel worn selves in Amy’s mother’s car.

We were driven to our free ride for our stay. Amy’s parents let us borrow an early 1990′s Chrysler Minivan. It is one of those text book metallic light blue paint jobs that you saw on those vans back then (and some still on the roads today).  The darn thing was an old war horse that ran as great as ever. Even though the inside was old, used, and certainly falling apart, the ride was smooth and somewhat comfy. Mega score and nothing but appreciation for family lending us a ride to save uber bucks! It would have been SO expensive to rent a car for the whole trip!

Anywho, I should get to the good parts before I make this post utterly long.

The first major haps was our early drive up to DC the next morning.  I piled a sleepy fiancee and all of our luggage into the van and set out on our couple-of-hours journey up north. We beat traffic like nobodies business and pulled into our hotel for an early check in. Needless to say when we got up to our room we passed out for a well deserved post red-eye-then-staying-up-late-then-early-driving nap.

After we woke up in the late afternoon we packed our walking bags and took off to catch the Metro from Crystal City to China Town.  I was shocked from so many different aspects of the Metro, enough so that I could probably write another blog post about it!  It’s clean, it’s fast, it’s efficient, and it goes all over the place.  I can only dream of having something like that in the greater King county area.

We did some walking around as I continued to be excited and in awe like a little kid.  I was so excited to be in DC and see the monuments, the museums, the white house, etc.  I decided that one of the first things I wanted to do was head to the Museum of Natural History.  There we spent quite a while going through only 5 full exhibition halls before our bellies began to grumble.  At that point we made our way to the lobby feeling satisifed by the fun we had and from all that we saw.

The lobby was filled with people. Wet people.  Earlier in the morning we had heard the weather report warn us of flooding in the DC area.  The clouds didn’t look so menacing even while walking around before we entered the museum, but when we attempted to leave we discovered rain coming down in buckets and the streets were literally filling up with water.  We used Amy’s G1 to find a place we wanted to go eat, then geared up in our handy Marmot rain coats (hyper light, uber compact, we use them hiking, biking, or walking around rainy Seattle) and went on a wet adventure walking 12 blocks in the pouring rain.

It wasn’t cold or anything, but we certainly were soaked from the thighs down. We both wore flip-flops that day which worked to our advantage in not having soggy socks or wet and heavy shoes.  By the time we arrived at our destination, Capitol City Brewery, the rain had just about stopped.  We waited about 15 minutes for our table and proceeded to enjoy ourselves with some decent beer (hops from Yakima, WA.. go figure!) and a TON of food.  We took our time to enjoy eating while drying out.  Once we finished, a short walk to one of the many Metro stops and we hopped our train back to Crystal City to chill at our hotel.

…and since I have been trying to get this post done in the midst of life, re-building a new music OS install, being ill, and business all over the place, I’m going to post this as a “part 1″.

I promise to get “part 2″ and some pictures out this upcomming week!