It’s raining this morning!
Oh, well. We’ll just put on our
raincoats and pop up our umbrellas and go out anyway! We are from Oregon, after all.
Our hosts invited us to have breakfast this morning at the
Carriage House B&B, and we decided to take them up on their invitation,
since we were trying to get up to the Zoo as early as possible today. The breakfast buffet at the main house was
quite a treat---Fresh Fruit & Cheese, Croissants with Butter and Assorted
Jams, a Variety of Fresh Pastries, a Selection of Cereals and Toppings, Coffee,
Tea, Milk and Juice. Everything had been
set out on a huge center island in the kitchen, food on one side and place
settings on the other. We were able to
help ourselves. The main house was very
elegant and nicely appointed. We took
advantage of our time there to use the house phone to reserve a cab for the
next day’s trip to the airport. It’s
hard to believe our time here is almost over.
We were on our way to the zoo by about 8:30 AM, and it’s a
good thing we were. We took the now
familiar Metro trip from Capitol South through Metro Center Dupont Circle ,
but instead of getting off at Dupont
Circle , we continued on the red line up to the
Cleveland Park Station near the zoo. The
Cleveland Park
It took us a while to locate the Pandas, but we were
successful, and it was fun to watch them.
They were very active this morning---fun for viewing, but not so much
fun for taking pictures! We tried. It was hard to tear ourselves away from the
exhibit, but we wanted to be sure and have some time at the Panda Gift Shop
before heading over to the cathedral.
Our plan had been to take a local bus from the zoo area to
the cathedral area, but this was Sunday, and local busses were not running so
often. It was about 10:20AM by the time
we got to the bus stop and we had just missed a connection. It looked like we had a choice of waiting
about 20 minutes for a bus or walking about 20 minutes to get to the
cathedral. This may or may not have been
a correct interpretation of the schedules, but we chose the walk and it was
beautiful. We headed east on Cathedral Ave NW
through a neighborhood of huge, old, well-maintained homes, many of them
brick. At Woodley Rd NW , we angled to the north and
ended out approaching the cathedral from the north side. As we neared the Washington National
Cathedral grounds, we could hear the bells ringing in preparation for the
11:15 AM service. We were able to get a
peek in the nave before the service started, but mostly had to content
ourselves with enjoying the exterior, the Museum Shop and the Bishop’s Garden,
which was very nice.
Somewhere along the way, we realized there would not be time
for us to take a walk or even a bus down Embassy Row if we wanted to make it to
Ben’s Chili Bowl for lunch. We were
disappointed, but since we had at least been able to get a glimpse of the row
as part of our tour on Thursday, it was a little easier to let it go today.
Instead, we picked up a 96 bus at the corner of Woodley Rd. and Wisconsin Avenue NW . We had to wait a bit, but a very nice young
man who was also waiting assured us it would come. Once on the bus, we had good ride through
some of the neighborhoods we had read about.
(Finally, a positive bus experience!)
The bus took Woodley Rd
to Cathedral to 29th (the area we had just walked through); then
took 29th to Calvert. Calvert
is the street that runs through the Adams-Morgan neighborhood and we were able
to see the signature mural from the guidebooks and get a bit of the flavor of
that area. At 18th, the bus
headed down to U Street
and the same was true for that neighborhood.
We got off the bus right across the street from Ben’s.
Our lunch at Ben’s Chili Bowl was
excellent. Kris had a Chili Dog and a
Chocolate Milkshake, Barbara and I had the Chili
Half-Smokes (Bill Cosby’s favorite).
Barbara also got an order of fries, which came with 3 forks. Kris and I helped her out with that. Juke box was playing. Loved the atmosphere! We timed it perfectly because once we got in
it started pouring outside.
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