Washington DC (yes, again – day two)

After a nice long day of visiting airplanes, we slept in Sunday morning, then headed out to brunch. We ended up at Old Ebbet, where we basically had no choice except to order some oysters even though it was 10:30am. They were delicious.

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Oysters were followed with Eggs Chesapeake, which is just Benedict with a crab cake instead of ham.

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After breakfast, I decided I needed a hat. Yen documented my shopping.

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In the end, none of them could compete with the one I’d left at home, so I left the story empty handed and decided to just brave the wind.

Last time we were in DC, we focused our energy on the museums along the Mall. This time we decided to head to the National Zoo.

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You can imagine that one of the major attractions of the National Zoo is the pandas. They were also exhausted. Who knows what goes on at the zoo at night?

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This one was on a mission to eat an entire room full of bamboo, and doing a bang-up job of it.

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Outside again, this salamander statue scared the crap out of me. I was mildly gratified when another woman came by a moment later and did the same jump/scream at the sight of it.

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Lots and lots of birds, which Yen is suddenly very fond of photographing (“I need a new lens, Kate!”). The nice bonus is that the bird house is a little warmer than outside.

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We saw a lot of these guys in Costa Rica, though of course not this close up.

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These two poor lovers! He’s a Mandarin and she’s a Wood. The zookeeper said they have paired for the winter, but they won’t be able to mate come spring. Ah, interracial love.

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We found this guy hiding behind a stump. Later (see below), we realized he was actually guarding his girlfriend.

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This little duck was extremely proud of this rock-top perch.

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Doesn’t that seem like a smile? They say lonely people anthropomorphize animals…

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Lots of flamingos! The poor guys were shivering in the DC cold.

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Nice beaver!

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The zoo is all done up for Christmas. You can walk through in the evening until 9pm.

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This keeper gave the iguana a drink, and then a little shower. He did his little head-bobbing happy dance after.

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There was going to be a photo of a snake here, but I left it out for you, Dad.

Instead, look at this light-elephant!

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For dinner, Yen’s friend David took us to Oyamel, which was so very, very delicious.

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And then the next morning, back to the airport, to a plane, to home. Our last look here is zooming on the train from one terminal to the next.

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We’re home this weekend for all of the Christmas parties, but next week? Iowa! Tune in!

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