Saturday

When I woke up, Sunshine and our guests were already out, so I hurried to the District to rendezvous with them for the second item on their itinerary: the memorials. When I arrived at Foggy Bottom Station, I tried to call Sunshine's cell phone and got no answer. I stopped in at the adjacent Starbucks for a latte. This Starbucks is contained within the George Washington University Hospital, and seems to be run by hospital staff. While I was in line, I saw Sunshine and our New Yorkers ascend from the Metro and cross 23rd Street onto the GW campus. I tried to call again, but no one answered. The morose old robot serving me seemed annoyed that I was making a call from the coffee line, though she was nowhere near the stage where she could finally ring me up. The next half hour of my life involved rushing about in the wrong direction until I finally talked to Sunshine, instigating sporadic flat runs through historic Foggy Bottom trying to catch up with my friends. I would get to one red light, and see them crossing at the next street down the block. Then I would lose them all again until the next crosswalk; repeat. Eventually, we all met just north of the Lincoln Memorial. We saw that, and the creepy Korean War and austere Vietnam Veterans memorials before heading to Federal Triangle to visit the half-baked National Aquarium located in the basement of the Department of Commerce building.* It's perhaps in the spirit of commerce that this seedy little underground hallway actually costs five bucks admission. Plaques requesting our pardon for transparent improvements rested beside plaques explaining that the wildlife on display were not the same as the nearby light-up museum plaques would have us believe. [Cavin]