DC Day 1

This post started on Wednesday night when Rachel and I drove into Athens. We were planning on driving to DC to see Deep. We woke up Thursday morning and had a much better idea…instead of driving, we called AirTran and found out we could fly standby. If you are under 23, AirTranU lets you buy a one way standby ticket at the counter for $80-$110. You don’t have a guaranteed seat, but you can call AirTran and they’ll tell you how many seats are available. With the way fuel prices are these days, most (in our case all) of the flights have room. We dropped off Rachel’s car at her house and parked at the airport Park N Ride. Within 5 minutes of being in the parking lot, I somehow managed to lose the parking ticket and was almost left behind by the shuttle bus. Making it to the terminal in one piece, we bought our tickets at 11:00am and were in DC by 1:30pm. We took the Metro to the GW stop and were met by Jordan and Deep. The hugs were classic – the only thing missing was Disney music in the background. While Deep returned for a few hours of “work” at the VA, we went to a café called Cosi for flatbread sandwiches – they were so good that an unnamed individual unknowingly ate part of the wrapping paper. After lunch, we took a picture in front of the White House and escaped the heat by ducking into a Smithsonian exhibit on art jewelry. Once Deep was off from work, we walked to the Lincoln, WWII, Washington, and Jefferson memorials. I hadn’t been to DC in a while and forgot how inspiring they are. It’s also fun seeing community leagues playing soccer, softball, and kickball on the mall. For dinner, Deep took us to an Italian place where the chef makes you a customized pasta meal. The restaurant was packed with young people and had a fancy Copper Creekesque atmosphere. We ended the day at Lucky Strike, a restaurant/high-end bowling venue, with painfully low scores but a great time.