Seeing the Sights

Soon I'll be leaving for a weekend in DC, where I will be attending the wedding of a longtime friend in Maryland.

I'm feeling a little ambiguous about the wedding itself - only two of our friends will also be attending, one with her family (husband and two kids) and the other one, my last single friend, is a bridesmaid so won't be around much. And since the wedding is not in our hometown -- it is, in fact, halfway across the country -- so aside from my friend's family and our two old friends, there won't be many people there who I will know.

Add to this the fact that I'm so incredibly socially awkward that at my own brother's wedding last month, surrounded by family and people I've known most of my life, I still spent quite a bit of time either standing awkwardly alone in a corner or following my sister around like a shadow.

So despite the fact that I love my friend and I'm extremely happy for her, I'm not particularly looking forward to the wedding part of the trip.

However, all is not lost!
 
I'm not completely dreading the entire trip, just the wedding part, thanks to my sister. She happens to also live in DC, and since I have a day and a half open for sightseeing, she has volunteered to play tour guide for me.

I'm super excited about this part of the trip because I've never been to DC before and there's so much to see there! It's such a fascinating city, a mix of the old and new. There are sights of great historical importance around every corner, but people currently making history also call the city home.

Right now I'm researching everything to decide the places I most want to visit, which only serves to make me even more excited.

I love traveling and visiting new places, and DC is crammed full of historic, important, or just plain beautiful places and things to see.

The hardest part is going to be narrowing it down to the little I can squeeze into such a small amount of time.

My friend arranged a monument tour the evening before the wedding, so I imagine that will cram in the National Mall and most of the monuments.

I know I definitely want to see the White House and visit the Capitol, so if those are not included on the tour I'll have my sister take me. Fortunately for me she's lived there for a long time and has played tour guide for visiting relatives and friends many a time, so she knows all the tricks.


At the top of my list is the Library of Congress, of course. Then come a museum or two, definitely the Newseum, and beyond that I'm a little hazy. There's nothing else really of pressing importance that I'm just dying to see, and there is so much to see and do in DC that it's hard to pick just a few things if you're not dying to visit.

Clearly this will require some more thought...