We had a welcome surprise in the form of Gramps who had driven all night from Florida to Largo, Maryland to visit Alexander in the hospital. He arrived in town a couple of days ago and got a room at his preferred Hampton Inn hotel not too far from that Sam’s Club and FedEx Field that Grammy and I had discovered earlier.
Once again, Moby Dodge had steered him successfully north and my hat’s off to him considering that the drive from Raleigh to the District is long enough for me without adding another ten hours onto the trip. But it was very nice to see another familiar face after being in Washington for over a week and in such circumstances.
Our main destination today is The National Zoo which is just north of the Adams-Morgan district where our favorite Indian restaurant is located. If you find yourself in the area of 18th Street NW and Columbia, find your way a bit south of the intersection to Jyoti. You will not be disappointed…and if you leave hungry, well, there is just something quite wrong with you!
The Zoo isn’t terribly far from the Ronald McDonald House (about fifteen minutes) but I wasn’t quite sure about the parking availability over there. Then an idea occurred…why not kill two birds with the same proverbial stone, hmmmm? Nicholas has had this thing about trains for the longest time but the Thomas train set at the Ronald McDonald house has got the boy positively hooked on trains and train sets! What better way to solve the parking problem and let him ride a train than to take the Metro to the Zoo.
As it turns out, the Red Line was the train for us. We could have hopped on at Brookland-CUA but Rhode Island Avenue was a better choice as it had a big commuter park-and-ride lot and luckily on weekends, parking there when riding the rails is free. Be advised that if you want to park there during the week, you’ve got to have a SmartPass card…there is no other way to get into the lot (but you could park at the Giant Foods just up the hill from the station…just make sure you’re not in an area where they’ll tow you!).
A friendly Metro employee showed us how to use the automated ticket booths (not the most obvious process in the world, they could definitely use a usability study on those machines) and pretty soon we had some all-day passes in our hands. The tickets celebrated the Presidential Inauguration…of 2001…but hey, they’re only four years and two months off, eh! The Metro guy also gave us a great hint for getting to the Zoo…get off the train at Cleveland Park station to walk down the hill to the Zoo entrance and then catch the return train at Woodley Park-Zoo/Adams Morgan which is down the hill from the entrance. It pays to listen to the locals, people! 🙂
There was a little bit of a wait for the train as they were single-tracking Red Line for maintenance on the rails downtown. But suffice it to say, Nicholas loved riding the train. Going underground near Union Station took him by surprise but soon enough, he was riding the rails like a seasoned pro.
Before long, we found ourselves at our stop and it was a relatively short hike down the hill to the entrance. The longer hike was through the Zoo itself…imagine a winding path down a fairly sizeable hill and you get the picture. Speaking of which, we snapped plenty of pictures of the pandas, giraffes, apes, and big cats. Unfortunately, the weather wasn’t the most cooperative…it was cool and overcast with occasional periods of rain and that literally put a bit of a damper on the trip because the animals were smarter than we were and stayed under cover. But Nicholas enjoyed seeing the animals and all of us (Grammy, Gramps, Daddy, and Nicholas) had a good time in spite of the weather.
I will confess that the Zoo was pretty disappointing…I think I was expecting it to be much larger than it was. That was probably silly of me as you’d think I’d be aware of just how little land there is in Washington that isn’t taken up by something. But still, I think the North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro is actually more impressive. And if you’ve ever been to the San Antonio Zoo near Brackenridge Park, the National Zoo (nor the North Carolina Zoo, for that matter) just really don’t compare to that world-class facility.
But that didn’t stop us from enjoying the day and the train rides with Nicholas who doesn’t know the difference between these zoos (yet!). Of course, you’d think that being dragged all over Washington and having ridden real trains, our little one would be tired from the outing.
Yeah, right!
As soon as we walked through the front door, he made an immediate left turn for the choo-choo, all signs of fatigue banished from view. That’s the sort of thing that makes you appreciate the comedian on the back of the parking lot tram at EPCOT Center in Orlando who wryly observed that you have parked in the ENERGY parking lot…energy is that thing that your kids will have at the end of the day but you will not!
Truer words were never spoken…
