National Botanical Garden, Korean Memorial

Day 2 in the Capital and we are off to a better start because Oscar

woke up naturally before the group left and we were able to get ready slowly but surely and take a taxi into the Lincoln Memorial.  Oscar’s one glitch of the day was not wanting to go in the elevator to get to the top of the Memorial.  He just freaked out for some reason, but once we were on and going up, he calmed down and then had fun looking at the “big” man in the  room.  He wanted to go down all the stairs and it was a good thing that Sandy was there to hold his hand and Greg was 

there to carry the stroller as we all came down the stairs with that great view to the Washington Monument and the Capitol.  That’s one thing that never gets old. The National Mall and the view from all angles of it.  It really is a breathtaking piece of work and it makes you realize how powerful green space can be.  Cluster all these memorials and buildings around without the walking paths, ponds and lawn and it would be boring, like New York City or something.  Concrete jungle works for one town and one town only, NYC.  Which we’ll be getting to

  soon, but I digress.  We then walked over to the Korean War Memorial, which I have never seen before.  I really liked it, you get the sense of them slogging through horrible terrain.  Again, we had to leave the area for a second because 

Oscar decided he wanted to go a different way than we were going and started to cry when he was told that he would come this way.  This is the hardest thing about this trip.  I’m trying to give him freedom to run 

around because he needs to play and run, but he doesn’t understand that when I say to come back to me, he has to come back to me.  He thinks that I’m notserious about the limits of him getting away from me and then he has to get in the stroller and stay there.  I don’t like to use the stroller like it’s a punishment, but it’s my only bargaining chip.  There is no “time out” out here and he would rather walk than be in the stroller, so there it is.  We then head over to the bus stop to go further down the mall and we’re

going to the Botanical Gardens.  Only I don’t realize that when the bus company gets to their main stop, they stay there for 15 minutes and do other things.  So, it takes longer than I expect to get there, but the Garden is amazing.  At first, I didn’t think it was much more than Meijer Garden has, which I still don’t think they’re too much bigger or more extensive.  Meijer Garden is comparable, but the National Botanic Garden is broke up in a

 way that makes you just pause and let it all sink in.  There is  the big atrium with water running through it and the sweetest smell from the flowers.  Even Oscar understood when I prompted him to smell.  Then you go through the tropics and the only thing missing in there is the butterflies from Meijer and the waterfall…But then you go through areas like the dessert area, medicinal plants, Hawaii and Mediterranean.  Each one smells so different and the Mediterranean

one especially had a lot of herbs in there, so you felt like you were in Italy and could see how we get the taste of foods from this area.  The pictures don’t do the garden justice, because you need to attach smell to it.  But we headed out

  of there to meet John coming out of the Hirschhorn museum and go have lunch with him, Rachel and two students.  Oscar immediately started flirting with the female student and had her taking selfies with him and was giving her the slow blink that I think he thinks is winking….We ate out of the food trucks that line up for the workers around here and there were 20 or more to choose from.  Rachel, Megan and I chose the most popular one, because John and Steven were done with their food by the time we got ours.  But you can’t pass up DC chicken with hand-cut fries.  It was pretty good and my chicken had cole slaw in the sandwich, which worked actually.