Planes, Trains, Automobiles…

Well, that was a fast vacation, but fun.

We left our house about 9 am and got to the airport at 11. Our flight was 1:50, so we had a long wait at the airport. Security took our sealed tiny containers of shampoo, I guess who cares, but it seemed really stupid. They were factory sealed…. Oh well.. here is a picture of Kyra illegally standing on the vents with Adam playing with her. (The sign next to her feet says “Don’t put luggage or feet on the vent”. LOL…. Why would they have a hand rail and make it so easy than??

Here is a picture of the plane we went on. I told everyone that we were going United Airlines, but I was wrong. We went AirTran. They were good, but no TV on the plane. We have to get Adam on another plane trip now so he can see the TV’s on the planes. It was a nice flight though.

Here is what our view looked like most of the flight. The clouds were the perfect shade of white and the blue the most beautiful blue. Than there was that dirty plane wing up there, it just so didn’t fit in. I felt like we were invaders of this perfect environment. I am not really an environmental either, but it just seemed so wrong. I never remember that feeling of previous flights.

Kyra was awake during the take off. She did really well, didn’t cry or anything. She fell asleep about � way through the flight and was asleep during the landing. I think her ears popping hurt, so she woke up crying. She quickly recovered though and was ready to run around the airport while we stood in the Budget Rental Car line for well over an hour. We got our car it was a very nice Chevy Impala in a blue color. I didn’t take a picture of it. It was nice though. The drive to grandma’s happened very quickly. It was dark when we got there. We had some spaghetti and talked for a few hours and then went to bed. It was really not all that exciting, but nice to see grandma again. I haven’t seen her in 3 years.

Here is Kyra walking towards Lake Jackson from grandma’s house. It was really foggy on Sunday morning, but the lake is right in front of her across from the T in the road. The road is very private basically no traffic.

Here is Kyra sitting on grandma’s lap. She seemed to like sitting there pretty good. We got a whole lot of pictures with her there.

Here is her with on grandpa’s lap with Adam on the side. She didn’t stay on grandpa’s lap so easy. He kept scaring her. Shoot if I were her I would have been scared too.

Kyra kept playing around on this chair while she was there, which was fine. I took some pictures of her though, so here is this one. We than left grandma’s at about 11:30 within 2 minutes of leaving Kyra was asleep for her nap. Here is that picture… You can tell we just left grandma’s because there is still chocolate chip cookie remains on her face. She is also in the carseat that belonged to the rental car company.

We were in Florida, so I told Adam I had to get at least one picture of a palm tree, so he was like their’s a palm tree take a picture of that, so here is that picture. My palm tree picture….

We were than taking the rental car back to rental car garage and going to the Amtrak station for our ride home. This went easily…we were there before you know it. We sat in the Amtrak station for about 2 hours, while we were there we were visiting with this other couple and there daughter. We soon learned that they were taking our same train and we basically were with them for the rest of our train trip. They were going to Richmond though, so got off the train 2 hours before us. It was really nice though. Here is there picture…. This little girl and Kyra really got along well. I think it made the ride seem shorter for both them and us which was great.

Well, on the train was really fun. We got to see all the views and there were tons. I wish the windows were cleaner cause I would have taken a lot more pictures. We looked through some pretty dirty windows though. The train staff was about the best possible. They were so helpful and friendly. They don’t spare any size either, you would feel safe in this dining car the waiter was 6’5” inches tall. He was super tall and big on top of that. We were joking with him that he looked like Shaq, and the truth is he really did. I am sure he gets that often, but I didn’t ask. Then we were first class with our own little sleeper, so we had a car attendant. He was right on top of things with help. It was great. We ate 3 meals on the train.

Here is Adam and Kyra sitting in the sleeper car on the train. This other is Kyra during her last nap of the trip. She fell asleep about 2 hours before we got to Washington and slept on the train seat/half-bed the rest of the way to Washington waking just as we pulled into the station. (Isn’t she amazing??)

Well, we did make it to Washington. Union Station is so very grand. We had never been there before and wow….you can be there all day by itself without ever leaving. The marble floors must be so hard to keep that pristine looking shiny with as many people who walk on them a day. It was amazing.

Well, we went from there to the National Zoo and getting to the zoo was half the fun. We rode on the subway or Metro as they call it in Washington. It was only 5 stops away, but we did everything humanly possible wrong. It was quite fun though and not as embarrassing as you may imagine. LOL… We got our tickets alright after about 10 minutes of fooling around with the machines. We got on the train properly…well except Adam didn’t run his card in the gate thing. We didn’t learn that til later though. We got on a train though and than it went out of service 2 stops from where we started, so they made everyone get off the train and wait for the next one. It was only like 2 minutes, so no big deal. We got on next one and went to the zoo exit. This is where we couldn’t get out of the metro area, because Adam hadn’t run a ticket, which was probably my fault. He just sort of slid through with me. So the manager fixed that for us and we knew better for next time. Then we were there…Woo hoo. We walked the what seemed like 2 miles to the zoo, probably only � mile in reality. We saw a few animals. The best one being the zebra… I know who would think the zebra to be the best one. The other animals had like mobs of people around them, so we basically are wooses and don’t fight to see. We sort of hung around the not so popular animals, like the zebra. Isn’t she pretty though, people are missing out here.

We stayed at the zoo only like 45 minutes. It was so hot and so crowded. We however decided to come back again on a rainy day, with our rain coat and there will be so many less people there. The animals will probably be in better spirits too staying in there nice houses instead of being out in the sun. Ha ha… Well, we were so impressed with the Union Station we decided to go back there and just look around and eat. We went back and I think I walked Kyra up and down the stairs like 10 times. It was pretty fun. We ate at this fancy restaurant and decided to see if we could get back to Baltimore a little earlier, so being home a little earlier. We could and did. So that was basically the end of the trip.

This was one of our best mini vacations. It was probably the best in a couple years. We don’t seem to do these as often as we should. We seem to be home bodies and I guess we do like that. It sure did feel good to be home after this trip as much fun as I did have. It couldn’t have gone any better. Well, that is that….Bye…