Off to DC with Katie!

We spent a few days in DC last week-- Craig was at a conference and Katie and I tagged along to enjoy the city. We went to the Natural History Museum (Katie liked the small tropical aquarium there-- dinosaurs were not interesting yet though!) and took a picture just for my Mom... so Mom- Here you go! (sorry about the lousy look, we'd hiked 10 blocks in the pouring rain-- and then I had to haul her stroller up 9 billion stairs to the entrance because NOWHERE was it marked that the handicapped access was around the other side, and it was still pouring and there was NO way I was hiking to the other side of the building at that point!)






The next day we went to the National zoo-- it was pretty chilly, but we met up with friends and walked around. Katie got a HUGE kick out of the small monkeys--- particularly the golden tamarins-- they were so colorful and active. She also watched the gorillas and orang utans (yeah, that's 2 words, who knew?!)pretty intently.
The new Asia exhibit has a lot of nice features-- there are displays at kiddo height with swatches of the fur of each animal that you can touch and buttons to push that make the animals sounds and such-- Katie was a big fan of the Red Panda fur-- so we got a snapshot of her on the panda statue!
It was a nice day at the zoo overall.

















And then to top it off, we finally got to eat at Jaleo-- a Spanish restaurant in the DC area that I have wanted to go to for years! We had pan amb tomaquet (toasted bread with tomatoes), gambas al ajillo (sizzling garlic shrimp and peppers), house made chorizo, and rosejat-- sort of a paella made with vermicelli and seafood. It was all delicious-- and other than the hostess thinking we were nuts for having our baby with us, it was wonderful. I'm not sure why she was so shocked it was a Sunday-- its not like I feared a wild party crew was going to come and start a brawl or something... who knows? Katie was pretty good though, so it all worked out well.

It was definitely a nice trip away and I enjoyed taking a few days away from work!