D.C. - Day 1 - National Zoo

Today Dean & I went to the National Zoo, part of the Smithsonian. It took some creative driving in D.C. to get there (including a brief trip down a one-way street going the wrong way). The zoo is situated on a hill, so there is a LOT of walking up and down hills. And the map was confusing, so a couple of times we went the wrong way (usually my fault). The zoo itself is free, but they still manage to make plenty of money: the map costs $2, parking $16, and the food...well the food was pretty expensive too. The cheapest thing we got was our traditional magnet, a mere $2.

We got to see the rainforest, indoor and outdoor bird sanctuaries, sea lions, pandas, beavers, giant octopus, and lots of others. We went to the pandas last. The pandas were so still, and positioned so strangely, that initially I thought they were just diaromas, and I didn't know why anybody thought they were interesting. Dean had to pull me back and convince me that they were real. There is a live "panda cam" here.

The zookeeper said that we were really lucky to see the beavers because they usually come out at night.

There were tons of trees and lots and lots of shade, which made walking in the zoo much easier. The only thing I didn't like is that sometimes there was only 1 route to get to a certain thing. For example, there was a "lemure" island, and directly south of it was the Amazonia rainforest. But you couldn't go directly south, you had to take a long circuitous route around lemur island, north to the "valley trail", then back down south to the Amazonia rainforest. It would have been much easier if we could have just walked the few feet south that it was located.

After the zoo, we went back to the hotel and took a nap (we were beat!) and then ate dinner at the Outback Steakhouse a couple miles from the hotel. Dean had the filet mignot and I had the pork chops.