We wanted to get an early start today, so we decided to meet for breakfast at 8am. After breakfast, we went down to the parking garage and started the task of packing up the van.
We finally got rolling around 9:30am. The drive was long and uneventful (as usual). We had dinner at Balloons in Ellicotville, New York and got home at 9:30pm.
We decided to meet downstairs for breakfast at 9am. This would let us sleep in just a little bit. Since it was such a beautiful sunny day, we just sat around the table and chairs around the pool and relaxed.
We dropped Liz off at her apartment to get ready for the commencement ceremony and the rest of Maloneys went shopping at Crate & Barrel. We then met at Bender Arena and proceeded to get to our seats.
It was a beautiful ceremony that included a pipe band. All of a sudden, in a blink of an eye, Liz was on the stage accepting her diploma. Liz graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration cum laude (which means a cumulative grade point average of 3.50 - 3.69).
After the ceremony, there was a reception at the Woods-Brown Amphitheater. While walking to the cars, we stopped to take many pictures of Liz around the campus.
Liz and her very good friend Heather organized dinner for the two families (16 people in total) at Maggiano’s Little Italy. This place was awesome and it was the best Italian meal that I have ever had. The meal was served family style (Heather and Liz picked out all of the courses) and the service was impeccable (this means that our waiter was cute).
After a few hours of eating, we went back to Liz’s apartment and picked up the last of her things that are coming back to Canada. We said our goodbyes and made our way back to our hotel.
We got up somewhat early and headed over to the Shady Grove Metro station. Since we had such a great time photographing the cherry blossoms with Washington Photo Safari, we decided to take their Monuments and Memorials course. What is really nice about this course is that there is at most 8 students and you receive lots of one-on-one attention. Normally the course is taught by David Luria but since he was in New York city, our instructor was Stewart Davis.
We met Stewart and the rest of the class at Lafayette Park. Before heading to the various monuments and memorials, we received alot of great advice from Stewart. He said that he has probably over 1,000,000 tips and that we would probably hear about 100,000 of them during the trip. We then proceeded to spend the next 4 hours photographing many of the sites in Washington, D.C. We went to the White House, the Albert Einstein Memorial, Lincoln Memorial, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Korean War Veterans Memorial and then ended the morning at Union Station where we ended up having lunch.
All I can say is that we had an awesome time. We learned a lot and laughed a lot. The following are some of Stewart’s pearls of wisdom when it comes to photography:
#1 - the best photography book in the world is your camera’s manual
#2 - get close
#109 - spend your money on the lens, not the camera body
#534 - buy a camera you will carry with you every day
#612 - the best light meter is the one in your camera
#813 - you are one lens away from happiness
#825 - the best camera is the one you have right now
#931 - yellow is the new green!
After lunch we grabbed the Metro and headed back to the car. We decided that we would spend the rest of the afternoon shopping at Tysons Corner Center. After lots more walking and shopping, we met up with the rest of the Maloney family (Ross, Susie, Greg, Erika and Liz) at the Olive Garden and enjoyed a lovely dinner. We ended our day by checking into our hotel, the Residence Inn Fairfax Merrifield ($98 USD) in Falls Church, Virginia.
After two early mornings, we decided to sleep in today. Luckily for us, the Easter Bunny was able to find us in Washington and left us some lovely gifts. We had breakfast and then headed over to the Giant Food supermarket to pick up groceries for our Easter dinner.
We drove back down to the Tidal Basin to walk around and look at the cherry blossoms in the sunshine. Susie even got interviewed by the local ABC news station. Liz met us at the FDR memorial and we all walked over to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. We finally got to see a show at the Albert Einstein Planetarium. After the show, we walked over to the National Gallery of Art and enjoyed a late lunch at the Cascade Cafe.
Once we got back to the hotel, most of us had a little nap while Susie prepared a lovely dinner. After dinner, we enjoyed a lovely evening of television … “Amazing Race” and the season premieres of “The Sopranos” and “Entourage”.
While surfing around for things to do in Washington, we stumbled upon Washington Photo Safari. Here is an explanation from their website .. “If you love to take pictures and travel, come join one of our photo safaris! A professional photographer takes you around the monuments of Washington DC or other domestic and international travel locations, while giving you tips on composition, lighting, and exposure!”. We discovered that they were having a tour called “Cherry Blossoms at Sunrise” and we signed up for it.
We had to be at the Tidal Basin by 6:15am. When we got up this morning, we looked outside and realized that it was snowing. It seems this bad weather is following us from Pennsylvania. We left the hotel by 5:15am and we were downtown in 15 minutes. This gave us 45 minutes to spare. People started slowly showing up and by 6:30am, we were on our way.
The next 2 hours was spent walking around the Tidal Basin taking pictures of the Jefferson Memorial, Washington Monument and the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial with the cherry blossoms in the background. David Luria was our instructor along with two other professional photographers. What was nice about this class was that the professional would take the time to help you with your pictures. They would give suggestions on how to make it a better photo and with using a digital camera, you can see your results instantly. I would highly recommend Washington Photo Safari. We got back to the hotel around 9:30am and enjoyed a hot breakfast and a well deserved nap.
We spent the afternoon shopping at The Container Store and Tysons Corner Center. We used “Jack” to find us Famous Dave’s for dinner. This place serves awesome BBQ. We then headed back to the hotel to call it a night.
