Washington 2023:
Day 18 - Washington, DC

	Wednesday, August 30, 2023: We were up at 4:00 AM, quickly out of the hotel, and at the airport a little after 5:00 AM.
	The Denver International Airport terminal building is beautiful with its white tent-like top.
	We were parked and heading toward the terminal a few minutes later. It was a strange feeling leaving all of the stuff that we had packed for this vacation in the van while we carried just a small subset with us.
	Here's the inside of the roof. Isn't it cool-looking?
	We had a 6:15 AM reservation with TSA at Bridge Security, but after seeing how long the walk was to get to that location and seeing how short the lines were at regular security, we decided to abandon our reservation and just go through security here.
	A mere fifteen minutes later, we were through security and at our concourse, standing in front of a statue of Jack Swigert, Apollo 13 astronaut and congressman-elect from the state of Colorado.
	There's a Voodoo Doughnut in the Denver Airport?!?
	Yes, there certainly is. Unfortunately, neither one of us wanted doughnuts this morning, so we took a picture and went in search of something else for breakfast.
	We decided to get pork and chicken spring rolls from City Pho. There were two rolls in each container, so we each got one roll of each flavor, which was perfect. Tom picked up two Diet Pepsis from Qdoba since we couldn't seem to find any bottled soda anywhere in the terminal.
	Our flight was on time, and very soon we were on board and taxiing toward the runway.
	Debbie enjoyed the view out of her window as we climbed to cruising altitude.
	When the flight attendants came around with snacks, we got one salty and one sweet snack bag, and then used our frequent flyer miles to buy two different snack boxes. We ate the free snacks immediately and saved the snack boxes for later.
	Welcome to Dulles International Airport in Washington, D.C., where the local time is now 1:58 PM.
	We headed to baggage claim to get our one piece of luggage, ...
	... and then took the underground walkways to the nearby Metro station. As we walked, we checked out some of the photos taken by the Hubble Space Telescope ...
	... that were hanging on the walls of the walkway. It's hard to believe that its been operating for thirty years.
	Once at the Metro station, we used a kiosk to buy SmarTrip cards and loaded them with just enough money to get us to our hotel. We were pretty sure that we'd be taking the Metro back to Dulles on Friday, but we didn't want to load the cards up and then have money stuck on them if we ended up getting to the airport some other way.
	We headed upstairs to the train platform, ...
	... and took in the view of the terminal from the raised platform. We were taking the Silver Line headed toward Largo Town Center, so we found seats on the platform facing that direction.
	We were thrilled to find a nearly empty car near the front of the train.
	Here's the Google building in Reston, Virginia, ...
	... the Adaire apartment building in Vienna, Virginia, ...
	... and the Boro event center in Tysons, Virginia.
	At 2:45 PM, we got off the train at the McPherson Square station, ...
	... where our hotel was right across the street. We were staying at the Hilton Garden Inn Downtown, ...
	... where we had a king room on the 14th floor. Let's take a quick tour of the room. Here's the bed, ...
	... here's the view of almost the entire room from the entry way, ...
	... and here's the bathroom.
	We decided to call the view from our window a "city view," but really it was of the alley running between the buildings on I Street and H Street.
	We took all of the food from the two snack boxes we'd bought on the plane and poured them out on the desk so that we could do a schoolyard pick for what we wanted to eat. It turned out that Tom choose all of the items from the Tapas box and Debbie choose all of the items from the Takeoff box.
	After our snacks, we settled in to watch Audrey and Dean's progress toward DC. They are the red 50 on this map, and their train is red because they were currently more than two hours behind schedule.
	Dean and Audrey were watching our location as well, and sent us this screenshot from Dean's phone showing their current location and ours at our hotel.
	When we asked how the scenery was, Audrey sent us this shot of a river and the mountains of West Virginia.
	A little while later, they sent us this photo of them having champagne in their compartment, dressed in top hats, bow ties, and monacles. They sure are fancy when they travel!
	We sent back a photo of us in our pajamas eating freeze-dried lasagna for dinner.
	We watched the sunset, ...
	... and streamed more of season 6 of "The Masked Singer" as we continued to watch Audrey and Dean's train get closer to DC.
	By 9:15 PM, they were under the Potomac River, ...
	... and by 9:30 PM, they had finally arrived at Union Station. It had been a long day, so we got ready for bed and went to sleep. Day 19 >