US Science and Engineering Festival

Today we went to the USSEF and it was awesome! We got to see a plethora of booths, the most exciting one had live bugs that were crawling on the people at the booths. There was a really awesome praying mantis from south Asia that looked exactly like a dead leaf and was crawling up a lady's arm. There was also the largest beetle ever, like size of a rat large.
We also got to see Bill Nye! We were two rows back and we could easily see and hear him and he did some pretty awesome demonstrations. He mostly talked about the importance of space travel and of taking care of the Earth we have. He showed us a Sterling motor which was pretty sweet, with a push and no more energy it ran off its own power for the entire hour. I also now want to join the planetary society, which he is the head of.
After the Festival we went to a Japanese ramen shop! It was AWESOME. I posted a picture on Facebook, but omg the noodles were so delicious. Same with the soup. It was totally worth the wait, and we got to sit at a ramen bar and be right by the cooks. So delicious.

Japanese Cherry Blossoms

The cherry blossoms are beautiful, amazing, and very transient. They are only around for about a week. We saw them on friday (best day off ever) and they are already falling this morning, saturday. Its still beautiful when they fall. 

If you stand on the Jefferson Memorial and look towards DC, the entire bank is covered in the cherry blossom trees. They look like Pink clouds. 

Even better, we decided to make it an even better outting. We then went to the Sackler Musuem to see the Kiyochika gallery, https://www.asia.si.edu/exhibitions/current/kiyochika/. We couldnt take pictures, but these were amazing. Beautiful prints, and a lot of them. We then walked around the Smithsonian Gardens and looked for a restaurant for probably 2 miles until we settled on Lime, again. Lunch time anywhere near Smithsonian is a nightmare. 

The National Botanical Gardens

The Botanical gardens were pretty awesome. Very beautiful and separated by Biomes. It is definitely a great place to go (especially with a date) in the winter. During the summer I dont think one would appreciate it as much, but in the winter it is extremely refreshing. The its really humid and a perfect temperature and there are lots of benches to just sit and enjoy the jungle, dessert, anything. Also when we were there, there was an Orchid exhibit and it was beautiful. 

The jungle biome was probably my favorite, it is rather tall and has walkways going up and a beautiful creek going through the center of it. But the dessert had this awesome spike plant.