April 11, 2019

We hadn’t planned to do any more museums today, but when nature calls you go to the nearest bathroom and you might just be surprised to find yourself inside “The Castle”.

1030 AM After all nature needs were met, we walked to the circulator bus stop and while we waited for the bus we decided to take some pictures and we found a set of keys on the ground.  I took the keys to the National Parks booth across the street, it was closed but I left the keys in the window so they would find them when they opened

We finally made it inside the U.S. Capital Building, despite not having reservations we were able to get a tour without a terribly long wait 🙂

Once we finished with our tour of The Capital building, the kids were starving. Lyndie was begging for Chic-Fil-A so we trekked to Union Station, what a neat building!

230 PM We had previously told the kids we would let them take 1 more ride on The Carousel on the Mall, so we headed back to the circulator bus stop to catch the bus back to The Smithsonian stop. Just as we were in the last crosswalk to catch the bus it started to pull away, but we weren’t concerned because we knew there’d be another bus coming along in just a few minutes, turns out the next bus was just pulling in as we got there. We got on the second bus and get seated when the driver tells us that she is on a mandatory break for 10 min, but we could probably catch the first bus as he was stopped at the light, so she opened the doors and as we got up to get off the first bus pulled away, so we just sat back down and waited until this bus was ready to go. After sitting on the bus for few moments, Matt overheard a woman asking the driver if she found a pink lanyard…..



Matt says to Barbie “I think she’s looking for a lanyard” I yell out to the woman- excuse me, did you lose your keys on a pink lanyard? Was it a Lexus Key? And she says “Yes!” So we start talking and determine the keys I found earlier were in fact hers so she rode the bus back with us to where we left the keys and walked with her to the National Parks Booth and low and behold her keys were still sitting right where I left them. Talk about divine intervention that we would randomly run into this woman HOURS after we turned the keys in and that the keys were still there. 

on our last train ride of the trip the girls decided they were “big enough” to ride standing up as they had watched so many others do during our trip, so we did let them for the stop before ours to our stop, but as you can see they enjoyed it.

430 PM we finally make get on the road back to Ohio, after several stops and lots of traffic as we left in rush hour, we finally made it home at midnight. It was a great trip and we’d definitely do it again. Matt and I are already planning another trip, but this time we will leave the kids with Ninny and Baba.