Marathon Saturday

What a weekend...as always. Friday night we explored the Reston Town Center, It's about 10 minutes from where we live. It is high rise apartments with tons of restaurants, stores, and offices below them. Pretty fun, there's lots of fountains, people watching, and free concerts!

We got to spend saturday with some friends from Logan, Chris and Deidra Hartwell. They are in our ward at home, but both have lived here in the DC area so they know what they're doing! They invited us to the Eastern Market for breakfast (yummy famous "blue-bucks" and incredible french toast!). Eastern market is kind of a street festival thing with booths of lots of random stuff and awesome produce, farmer's market style. After the roaming the market for awhile, we made our way to the National Arboreatum (446 acres of trees and land! Very nice to be out of the city). This is one of the few places around here the Hartwell's had never been to, so it was a lot of fun to adventure together. By far, the very best part of the Arboreatum is the Koi pond.

This is the corner of the pond where the fish food that you can buy and feed them is, so I think they are trained to just all be right here! It was so crazy.
You could reach down and put your finger in their mouths if you wanted, because they were all just hoping someone would drop some food into their mouths. Of course, we spent a good majority of our time here, using up all of the quarters we had. These columns were originally part of the capitol, but got moved to the arboreatum. Kind of random, but nonetheless kind of cool.

From the Arboreatum, we made our way to the National Cathedral. This building was spectacular, overwhelmingly huge! It made you feel like you were in Europe.

Did you know there is a "gargoyle" (for lack of the right word) that is Darth Vader? Yep, true story. Thanks to Deidra for the cool trivia; she was able to attend the Cathedral's 100th birthday celebration last year.
Here is walking in the front doors looking down the nave (this picture actually makes it look a lot brighter than it really is in there, it's a very dark place). Many past president's funerals have been held here. There are tombs inside all over the place, a gift shop downstairs, and the Bishop's Gardens outside with more gift shops. The stained glass was my favorite part, don't worry, we didn't do any kneeling. ;)

After the Cathedral, the Hartwell's were ever so kind to invite us to their place in Alexandria for a totally awesome dinner. We all kept joking that it was a never ending day, and that we were all so sick of each other by now, but I really enjoyed myself and had a blast getting to know Chris and Deidra a little more. I am really looking forward to our next marathon adventure! That is, if they aren't sick of us yet...

After dinner, they took us down to Old Town Alexandria. It was really cool! Old Town is a historic place, there's even cobblestone roads! They've kept it very unique, you can even have someone dressed up like George Washington days give you a tour of the place.

Old Town looking over the Potomac River, a really beautiful sight.

Well of course we had to stop for a treat, and I couldn't pass up this place! This is for you, Pop!! We thought about you the whole time we enjoyed our really yummy ice cream!

We met the guy that owns our house yesterday. He is here helping out at the Redskins football camp, and oh don't worry, he decided to stay here in the house while he's here! Because who can afford a hotel room for a few nights when you're retired NFL!!! Oh man, this whole situation just keeps getting weirder and weirder. But I guesss we should have expected this was all too good to be true. It's just really awkward for everyone involved, because really, this is HIS house, but right now, it's our house too! He's really nice, and you can tell he's trying to stay out of the way, but it's still way weird. Whatever, enough of our woes. Here's a video clip of those crazy fish at the koi pond while we were feeding them. Listen for the sound they make!!! Enjoy it over and over again.