Old Town Alexandria

We found a great deal on Travelzoo for a weekend stay in the Old Town area of Alexandria, VA (right across the river from Washington, DC).

Unfortunately we forgot our nice camera so we only had our iPhones for pictures!

The view from our hotel room was great, we were on the 10th floor and had floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Patomac River and the Capitol Dome visible in the distance!

Avery loved looking out at the water and pointing to the sailboats and saying "boat boat"

Friday night we strolled down the waterfront walk

Over to King Street

For those that haven't been to Alexandria, Old Town is from the colonial era (It's founding pre-dated DC), and is filled with block after block of buildings with great colonial architecture and numerous stores and restaurants

We had a beer and ate dinner Friday night at Pizzeria Paradiso

 We ordered a Margharita Pizza on wheat crust, and Avery checked out the menu and got a kids cheese pizza

Then we had ice cream at Ben and Jerry's and Avery loved playing on the cow couch!

Then she became fascinated with they eyeball and wanted to poke its eye out!

Then we enjoyed the nice cool evening while Avery played at the park

Saturday we took the Metro down to the National Acquarium.  It's the oldest Acquarium in the nation, which means it is not big and a bit outdated in some ways (It's in the basement of the Department of Commerce Building), but Avery did like pointing at the all the fish and even the alligator!

She did get scared when the leapord shark swam up to the glass

About one second after this photo was taken she turned away and cried and hugged mommy!

We went back to Alexandria stuffed from our lunch we ate near Chinatown, so we just had a pastry and coffee for a dessert instead of dinner

Sunday we took the Metro over to the National Zoo

The Panda exhibit was really nice, they don't make you wait in a long line and shuffle you through quickly like the SD Zoo.  They were indoors at the time and feeding on Bamboo.

Then we went to the Asian Elephant exhibit. Avery absolutely loved the elephant. She was completely fascinated by it. She stared, pointed, waved, for 30 straight minutes!

They were doing a daily checkup on the elephants teeth, feet, back, etc so they had it do tricks so they could look at the bottom of the feet, open it's mouth, etc.

After we left we got a stuffed elephant from the zoo gift shop so we could remember the trip.  Avery hugged the stuffed elephant the whole drive home!