No Giraffes!

So about THREE weekends ago, myself and a few other interns went to the National Zoo.

(Sorry for the delay in posts, blogging isn't the most fun activity to sit at home and do when I am in the nations capital)

It was the last nice day before we hit our week of 98-100 degree weather, which was brutal. Everyone was miserable with the high temperature, blazing sun and extreme humidity. We were walking around in a sauna all day. 

But back to the zoo...we knew the weather was coming, so we enjoyed our Sunday, walked down to a frozen yogurt shop right in-front of the zoo, grabbed our froyo and headed through the gates!

Panda Time!

 My first panda sighting

He is eating corn on the cob!!

Check out those teeth!!

The elephant exhibit was under renovation, but I still captured a great shot of the beauties...

 There were several asian women starring at these gorillas though a glass window and all of a sudden the gorilla jumped at the glass and tried attacking though it, it was THE funniest thing we witnessed all day, the guards had to come out and everything. 

 He was having a blast swinging from left to right with his toy

 Yeah..get that scratch!

 Beautiful creature

 There were three otters in one of the largest exhibits in the zoo, it didn't make sense.

That is all of the pictures I have from the zoo, but just to keep you a little up to date:
This past weekend, I had the pleasure of traveling up to NY to visit mom and Tina, one of mom's best friends since grade school. We stayed at her home in Long Island and traveled all through out the city and Long Island, we even made it out to Fire Island, a beautiful island that reminded me of the Keys.
We even got to see Joni for a day, another one of mom's oldest friends and almost a step-mother to me if it would've worked out and I would've gone to Rollins! (kidding, kinda) But really, that was nice, Joni and her youngest daughter Kristen, who now lives in Manhattan, took us to Brooklyn and we got to walk the Brooklyn Bridge; something I'll never forget. I surprised Joni, Kristen, and my mom with Georgetown Cupcakes (TLC's show DC Cupcakes) and they were thrilled! The rest of NY was great, we saw a broadway play, Sister Act, we ate amazing pizza owned by members of the mafia, we walked about 10,000 miles and best of all I got to spend time with mom, who I have missed so much...if only dad was there too, it would've been perfect! So thank you mom and dad for making that weekend great!

I will give you more details later, hopefully followed up by pics (mom email them to me). But first I have a few more blogs I believe I need to catch up on.

By the way, DC is great and so was New York and Philly, but I miss FLORIDA!!!

DC by night, but first Truckeroo!

This past Friday, I got a call about a food truck festival called Truckeroo. I have heard a lot about food trucks, and the neat atmosphere that comes along with them, but I have never had the opportunity to go to one, so when my friend Riya invited myself and the other interns, I jumped on it! Here is the link if you want to check it out, Truckeroo. 

The festival was great...it consisted of 25 food trucks, with a variety of desserts such as cupcakes, ice-pops, and cookies, and then almost any food you can imagine to be in a food truck, and some you wouldn't imagine, Greek, pizza, burgers, Thai, and Sushi, just to name a few. They had TaKorean. Korean BBQ in a Taco, thats what I wanted to dive into, but it was the longest line, estimated wait of an hour and 10 min-no joke. The average wait was about 45 minutes for every food truck, except the dessert trucks. So we went for a nice ice-pop and people watched for a bit!

 

A lot of the food trucks had employees walking down the lines with iPad's taking orders, I found that interesting. 

They had the famous tail-gate game Cornhole available to play, so we tossed around for a few games. The Canadian had never heard of it before...CrAzY 

 Greek food sold out fast.

So you're probably wondering where I ate. Well....we left. The lines were too outrageous and we decided next month we have to get there right after work to beat the wait. We headed to the famous Ben's Chili Bowl. Now, I am not a chili eater typically, and I am most definitely not a hot-dog eater. But I decided to step out of my shell and attempt to get something a little different.

Don't worry...I didn't get a hot dog with chili otherwise known as a Chili Dog. But I did try a Turkey Chili Dog. I was not a fan. The chili was a mess and the turkey dog tasted like I remember a hot dog tasting 11 years ago. But it was an experience and I am glad I ordered it...

If you're thinking that in this picture it looks like poop is on my hotdog  turkey dog... don't worry, thats exactly how it looked on my aluminum foil. 

Now to the good stuff...DC by night!

It was my roommates last night it town, which is unfortunate because we had just gotten to be pretty close. But I'm sure we will be staying in touch, after-all... he wants be the future president! Chris decided that he wanted to go check out the memorials at night, so we all didn't hesitate at the thougt, and planned our night accordingly. Starting with the Washington....

After, we headed down by the reflection pool which is under renovation-so upsetting. The World War II Memorial is right before that though, along with everything else this night, minus the reflection pool, it was beautiful. 

View of Washington from WWII

Next was Lincoln. All of the lights at the memorials just brought out so much more character to the already incredible structures. 

Chris and I

After leaving these famous steps, we headed towards Jefferson, I was amped because I hadn't seen the Jefferson Memorial yet. It was a loooong walk there, needless to say it was worth it. On the way, we had some great views of the memorials...

Thomas Jefferson Memorial

And after a 30 minute walk of getting lost, being chased by a homeless man, attacked by bugs and hoping a fence, we made it to Jefferson.

Just to be clear, I did not take this picture ^, but my picture did not do this memorial justice and is deceiving because the majority of the building is rounded. Not that none of you haven't seen it before, well never mind...

So the night overall, was perfect. Started with my first Food Truck Festival, dined at a famous spot in D.C., and ended up seeing the Nations most famous structures at midnight just to be in awe of how amazing our country truly is.

I have a lot more from this weekend to post, but I am exhausted and have to be up in 6 hours.

Until then, God Bless