Day 4: Family Reunion and Antiquity

Note that these entries are part of a series that I am posting after the fact. (Sorry about that: I did not have any time to find a free WiFi spot to even check my email.) Please use the search box in the page header to look for other daily entries about my inaugural travels and activities.

Today, we slept in until nine o’clock. We each had a continental breakfast at the hotel and caught taxi cabs to Georgetown for a small family reunion at Uncle Karl’s house. Note that the taxi fare was only $14 plus tip—a reasonable amount given the short distance from our downtown hotel.

Upon arriving, we had fun talking it up with family members from Colorado, Nevada, Oregon and of course D.C. It was great fun, seeing my uncle’s house for the first time. He has books everywhere, which is to be expected given his great love for history. For brunch, we dined in true Texas fashion: corn bread, eggs, bacon, Texas sausage, and fruit (I think). That’s all I can remember at the moment. The best item on that list was the Texas sausage, by far. I need to email my uncle and really ask how I can get some! For drinks, champagne (the real stuff, none of the Californian sparkling wines) and mimosas. Excellent.

After mingling for a few hours, family members started to leave, as some had scheduled White House tours to attend, so the rest of us began to filter out as well. By this time, snow had started to fall. Now mind you, it was a very light snow and nothing compared to the dumping of several feet Reno withstood just recently. Our taxi cab came and dropped us off at the hotel, where he stated that it would be the same price as when we were dropped off. (Apparently, we were the only large group that day to require numerous cabs to my Uncle’s house, so we had one of the same drivers who had dropped us off a few hours earlier.) I promptly handed him a $20 bill, at which he scoffed, “What’s this?” My fellow passengers and I exchanged a few confused looks and calmly stated that our previous fare was only $14. “It’s double fare! Hazard pay. You know, for the snow.”

Well, I don’t know where you, dear reader, hail from, but a sprinkling of snow hardly counts as a hazard when driving! Still, who are we to argue with the cab driver? Not being from D.C., we gave him two twenties at which he resolutely said, “Thanks,” and got back into his cab. Change? Heh! Don’t count on it.

With half the day still to go, we decided to make a tour of the Smithsonian museums. In all, we visited the National Museum of American History, the National Museum of Natural History, and the National Air and Space Museum. There were some great exhibits in each, and we saw a 3-D IMAX movie at the Natural History Museum entitled “T-REX: Back to the Cretaceous.” It was more of a short drama movie with some cool 3-D effects rather than factual information, so that was a bit of a disappointment.

With those museums out of the way, we headed back to our hotel around five o’clock via the trusty Metro system and ordered Thai food from a place just down the street. Tonight, we fell asleep to the Garden State DVD.