Trip to DC... Trial #4!

Last week we all went to DC, on a valiant attempt to test whether our last visit was an outlier or not...

We had a really good plan:
* Hotel reserved close to the Zoo - packed warm jackets for fall in DC
* Plans for lunch, dinner and days with friends who recently moved to DC or were in DC for the conference
* DVD Player for the plane with the new Kung Fu Panda DVD bought for the trip

We were all set for a bit of R&R and lots of animal discoveries...

The best surprise was that Amélie blew her parents away by being an angel in the plane:



The surprises kept coming, but weren't so nice... Let's compare our original plan with what the trip ended up being:

* Hotel reserved close to the Zoo - packed warm jackets for fall in DC
Amélie turns out to be a total homebody, she asked to go back to the big plane to go home and sleep in her crib everyday...
The weather was freezing... After buying gloves, hats and a big blankie to be able to go outside, we still had to have a strategic series of stops between the hotel and the zoo (2 starbucks stops and way too many chocolate milk necessary to cover the distance). Best part of the Zoo for Amélie? Pandas? Gorillas? NOPE! The construction site for the new elephant trail:



She might be on her way to become an engineer and design diggers. The construction workers were from time to time looking up at us, clearly wondering what we were doing there for so long in that cold...

* Plans for lunch, dinner and days with friends who recently moved to DC or were in DC for the conference
Amélie caught a pink eye on the first day we were in DC, add to that a nasty cold that she then proceeded to share with her daddy. As most of our friends in DC either have small kids or a pregnant, most visits/meet-ups were canceled... Big SNIF from maman...

* DVD Player for the plane with the new Kung Fu Panda DVD bought for the trip
Biggest hit ever! The DVD player was extensively used in the plane and the hotel room! This time, we even let Amélie watch her DVDs in her stroller on our way to the restaurant and in the restaurant while having dinner one evening...

In sum, we had a pretty unhappy camper, and we now have a maman with pretty short amounts of patience left... These days, maman's mantra is dictated by the Monty Python:



In conclusion, accumulating evidence indicates that future trip frequency might decrease...