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Yesterday we had an amazing opportunity provided to us by NASA to participate in their first ever Tweetup at their Langley Research Facility in Virginia.  Langley is the oldest NASA facility but before finding out about it on Twitter I only thought of Langley and the CIA, not even realizing there was NASA in Virginai.  As part of the tweetup we received a behind-the-scenes look at some of the most storied sites at Langley including a hangar tour, lunch with astronaut Susan Kilrain, a wind tunnel tour, going into inflatable moon housing and watching the drop of Orion, an 18,000-pound space capsule into the test pool. As they say a picture is worth a thousand words so I’m going to save my fingers and let you see for yourself.

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After flying into Williamsburg at 10:30pm Friday night we had to be up bright and early Saturday morning because we had a East Wing White House tour that we had to be at by 9:30am.  By the way, DC is close to 3 1/2 hours away from Williamsburg. One of our friends fathers works on the White House website so he was able to get us in for a East Wing tour on short notice and was nice enough to go through and give us a personally narrated tour.  A couple things about White House tours, you have to know someone to get a tour with less than 21 days notice and they don’t let you take any pictures in the White House. It was a little cooler than us Floridians are used to so we were easy to spot in DC, I think we may have been the only two people in shorts.  It turned out to be a beautiful day, just a little chilly when the wind was blowing.

Next up was the Old Post Office, this was recommended by a good friend so we had to check it out.  It also didn’t hurt that Shana’s father worked for and retired from the Post Office so it was neat to get to see this early Post Office Building.  The bell tower of post office has one of the best views of the city and strangely enough is considered a National Park and has rangers in it to guide you.  Check out the panaromic views for the capitol, Washington Monument and everything else in DC.

 After the Old Post Office we headed over to the National Mall which strangely had no shops but still had a ton of people all over the place, while there we stopped at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. Everything from Oceans, Dinosaurs, and the Hope Diamond are all available to see free of charge at the Museum.  As with most of the things in DC there just doesn’t seem to be enough time to do it all at once.  And that’s just one of the Smithsonian Museums, there are a total of 19!  After that we made the ride on the Metro, our way around for the day while in DC, to Arlington National Cemetery.

Arlington is one of those places that no matter how many times you go, I think it affects you differently each time. The beautifully manicured grounds, everything lined up, nice and neat and organized, but then you remember that each of these grave markers is someone who has lost their life to allow us the freedoms that we each enjoy everyday often with thanks and even worse with a sense of entitlement.

We finished the day up at a restaurant that is DC staple and we had recommended to us multiple times.  Well, they recommended Ben’s Chili Bowl but the line was out on the sidewalk and to the street so we went to Ben’s Next Door. The food was absolutely delicious and we will be going here EVERY time we come to DC.  The Pesto Pasta was amazing and the Fried Chicken is some of the best I’ve ever had, and this isn’t even the place that was recommended.

We finished dinner, rode the Metro back to our car and then made the 3 1/2 hour trip back to Williamsburg, our home for the trip.  And that was just day 1.