Happy 4th of July!
Happy belated 4th of July! No updates in a long time, but it’s been a busy last few days. My family came up here on Saturday, and we spent the afternoon and evening touring the University of Maryland campus and taking a trip to Ikea. My family thought Ikea was pretty cool, though I think Sapana was a little underwhelmed. Perhaps we had hyped it too much. We had some big plans there — we talked about ‘ikeaifying’ our formal living room (desk, reading chair, side table, lamp, bookshelf, everything) and also to replace Sachi’s very old bedroom furniture. Ultimately though, we had no way of bringing large items back home and Cary, NC is too far away for any of the IKEA stores to ship to us. So my family just picked up a few small things.
Sunday was spent in Washington, D.C. We visited the National Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Air & Space museum, and walking around the Capitol building. We got back early to College Park and my mom found a great Thai restaurant nearby.
On Monday we drove out towards Annapolis, the capital of Maryland and home of the US Naval Academy. Annapolis was a surprise to me; it is a nice small town with a great harbor area and small shops. We took a boat tour out on the harbor and saw the sprawling Bay Bridge in the distance.
After picking up sandwich wraps, we drove over to a small park just before the Bay Bridge (costs $5 per person!) and walked along the beach for a while. We continued our tour of the Chesapeake area and the Eastern Shore of Maryland across the bridge and then south towards the small bayside town of St. Michael. And is it ever small! Just one real street; one could walk the entire town in maybe 10 minutes. It was almost closing time for the maritime museum, so we skipped it. We only spent maybe an hour here before heading back home, though we stopped in Baltimore and had dinner at the inner harbor area (which was underwhelming due to poor service).
The 4th of July was spent in our nation’s capital. We hit the National Zoo and saw its star attraction: Tai Shen, the baby panda cub, who turns 1 year old this Sunday. He was adorable and put on a wonderful show for us. He started on a branch, then climbed down and sat by a log while hunting for food, then clamored up onto a rocky outcropping before we left.
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I asked the kind volunteer there, and it turns out he sleeps half the day and eats the other half! Everything he does is adored by the hundreds of people who watch him. What a life! Afterward we caught lunch at Dupont Circle (where I stayed in my D.C. trip two Octobers ago) and continued down towards the National Mall. I took them to the recently finished World War II memorial.
Ty Reasonover Said,
July 15, 2006 @ 7:06 am
Hey Saket. That is pretty cool to spend the fourth in Washington. It was ironic because I was in Tiannamen Square in Beijing on Independence day. Got to see some pandas in Beijing too, but not Tai Shan. Another fun coincidence, my Chinese name that my teacher gave me is Tai Shan, which is the name of a famous mountain in China, and the baby panda at the zoo in D.C. Fun facts, anyways, hope all is well. Tell your family I said hello. -Ty