Today is my friend’s Karen dog’s birthday today. Kaili is 6 years old and he’s a Shetland Sheepdog (aka Sheltie). For the last few years, we’ve gone to the University of Waterloo and taken his photo. The first year, his photo was featured in the The Record as “Pet of the Week”. Last year, his photo took 1st place at the Paris Fair. I hope he’s lucky for me again this year.
After having our wonderful breakfast, the cars got packed (even made the bed in the back) and we started our trip home. We left around 9:15am and “Jack” said that we would get home around 6:02pm. We stopped at the Cracker Barrel in Altoona, Pennsylvania for lunch and an antique mall in Salamanca, New York.
We did a little bit of shopping at Kmart and Tops in Buffalo before heading home. We had no problems crossing over at the Peace Bridge and were home by 10:00pm. Only 4 hours later than “Jack” calculated. I wonder why.
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.
When we got up this morning, we were hoping that the snow had stopped. We looked out the window and the cars were covered. Yuck. I’m glad that I left my snowbrush in the car. We were on the road by 9:15am.
We wanted to keep driving until we got past the snow and luckily for us that was just south of Pittsburgh. We decided that we would stop at the Prime Outlets Hagerstown in Maryland. Somehow we managed to kill 3 hours there and load up the car with lots of goodies.
We got into Washington around 6:15 and picked up Liz and her roommate Chelsa for dinner. We decided that we wanted to go to Olive Garden and “Jack” got us there with no problems.
After dinner we decided to split up … Karen and I went to the hotel and I sent “Jack” with everybody else. This would be a true test for him. He passed with flying colours and got Ross and Susie to Liz & Chelsa’s apartment and then to the Residence Inn Fairfax Merrifield ($152 USD) in Falls Church, Virginia.
We all got unpacked and then decided to call it a night. It’s going to be a very early day tomorrow.