Louis Ginter Botanical flowers and butterflies

Monday (6/9) was all about getting my hair cut, cancelling the newspaper, giving away perishable food, finalizing details about dog sitting, cat sitting, plant sitting, and most importantly….TV watching (so that we can record 2 weeks worth of shows while we are gone) and PACKING!!!!

**************************************

Tuesday (6/10) the alarm went off at o' dark hundred (4 AM!!!)and we were on the road by 5:15 with the car packed.  We drove until 7:30 when we saw a Cracker Barrel sign for breakfast.  We split wild Maine blueberry pancakes , along with eggs, biscuits, gravy hash brown casserole and bacon. 

first stop on the famous Northeast Vacation Tour of 2014!!!

On the road again, we headed to the Louis Ginter Botanical Gardens

in Richmond.   We arrived at the gardens before noon and spent a lovely hour with the flowers

and butterflies...

on the way to the butterfly exhibit

butterfly/orchid conservatory

yes, they had a butterfly exhibit and I got three to land on me. 

The place was really awesome.  When we started out again, we couldn’t find our way back to 95 north... only to 95 south.  Finally, we took the GPS and keyed in the address that every school child knows (1600 Pennsylvania Avenue) and we were on our way.  When I hit 395 (which was very close to Washington DC),  Michael said “we are going to exit 88”… I said “well, we have a long way to go because we're only at exit 2"…..I drove for a bit and then actually looked at the GPS…it showed exit 8 B…..I told Michael he needed to start wearing his glasses  J.  So, there were no more mishaps until we were literally five minutes from the hotel, where we got trapped in the rotary-from-hell.  When we were circling for the 59^th time, Michael finally called the hotel and the nicest woman at the desk guided us to the hotel within 20 minutes (LOTS of traffic…including car/bike AND pedestrian).  We got checked in and collapsed for just a bit.  At 5:30 we had a meeting with Faye (one of the tour guides in Washington) and at one point as we were talking, she said “if you lived here, we would be friends”…I thought that was the nicest thing to say….I thought she was a lot of fun as well.  She gave us the scoop on our trolley and suggested what we should see on Wednesday versus Thursday, and also told us about several good restaurants within walking distance of the hotel.  We finally walked to CITY LIGHTS OF CHINA at 7 PM.  I had orange chicken with asparagus (it was so nice, it was actually a light entry as the chicken was NOT breaded and fried….just white meat chicken, cut into pieces and sautéed in the sauce….wish everyone would do it that way), and there must have been 2 cups of asparagus…I ate EVERY piece…it was so good!  Michael had won ton soup, shrimp steamed dumplings and tempura veggies.  We walked back to the room, watched a bit of TV and collapsed.