Day 18 -- Washington, D.C.

We started out the day with a great breakfast with Feebs, an old friend from St. Olaf whom we had not seen since she visited Lafayette in 1997. Feebs made us french toast, bacon and coffee and we learned all about her adventures in competitive canoeing. Thanks, Feebs! It was wonderful to see you!

After breakfast, our trip into the city on the Metro took twice as long as it was supposed to, apparently because there’s some work being done on the tracks and the subway had been squeezed down to one lane at some point.

We got off the Metro near the Capitol and walked around on the steps to the building, then ended up across the street at the Rayburn House Office Building for lunch. We had heard that there’s a fantastic cafeteria on the lower level, and that it’s fun to eat amongst the congressional staffers. Apparently the Rayburn cafeteria chefs had declared today blueberry day, and we enjoyed blueberry lemonade, chilled blueberry-yogurt soup and roast pork loin with blueberry-apple compote.

From there, we walked the National Mall, in this scorching, 100-degree heat, to the Smithsonian Institution Building, also known as “the Castle.” This is the original Smithsonian building, and it doesn’t house a museum collection anymore. It’s an information center for visitors to all of the gazillion other Smithsonian buildings in town. We were there because it really does look like a castle, and because it was hot outside and we needed a cool place to sit for a minute.

It took us a few minutes to regroup, but soon we had enough strength to talk across the mall to the National Archives. Thanks, I guess, to the Nicholas Cage movie, “National Treasure,” Charlie was interested in seeing the Declaration of Independence, and in finding out what other treasures are kept there. But when we got to the front doors, we learned that there was a 45-minute wait just to get inside. It was 3:30 in the afternoon, and 100 degrees out. And no shade. Charlie decided that he didn’t need to see the Declaration of Independence that badly.

So, we went to the National Portrait Gallery, instead, and surveyed the presidential portraits.

The Metro ride back to Rockville took twice as long as it was supposed to again;. there was a broken-down train on the tracks. It didn’t matter. the ride could have taken all night and we still would have made time to cool off in the hotel pool before crawling into bed.