On the day we arrived, my sister had Kai help out in the kitchen, showing him how to make home-made ice cream.
After mixing the ingredients, Kai poured them into the ice cream maker.
My sister's dog Emi loves to see us, and it's become part of the tradition to take her on a walk down the nearby nature trail.
My sister always makes great meals for us. Here we are about to have satay and fried rice with kabayaki (eel).
Of course, we look forward to the Thanksgiving meal. My sister and brother-in-law grill the turkey over charcoal and it always comes out tender and moist. My oldest nephew Ian is in charge of the stuffing, which Kai had extra helpings of this year.
The day after Thanksgiving, we drove into Alexandria, just across the Potomac River from Washington D.C.
One highlight was seeing the Torpedo Factory.
The building used to house a torpedo factory, but is now home to about a hundred small art studios of all kinds.
After seeing the art studios, we walked along King Street, had lunch, window shopped, and had ice cream.
We then went to Arlington National Cemetery, the country's largest military cemetery which serves as the final resting place for more than 400,000 military veterans and their immediate family.
We went to see the gravesite of former President John F. Kennedy which has an eternal flame.
Arlington House, the former home of Robert E. Lee, is at the top of the cemetery and provides a great view of Washington D.C. with the Capitol Building and Washington Monument visible in the distance.
We went to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier where a sentinel stands guard 24 hours a day, ritualistically marching 21 steps back and forth in front of the tomb and pausing 21 seconds on each side. Twenty-one was chosen because it symbolizes the highest military honor that can be bestowed—the twenty-one gun salute.
At the top of the hour, we witnessed the changing of the guard ceremony.
It was also moving to see the symmetrical rows of tombstones throughout the cemetery.
On our drive back home from my sister's place, we stopped in the town of Berkeley Springs, West Virginia and visited the bath house.
The town is fed by mineral springs and they have a bath house where they heat the spring water to 102 degrees. You can reserve a private bath for a half hour. It was very relaxing and my wife particularly enjoyed it as it is very reminiscent of a Japanese onsen.
George Washington used to visit the spring and they have preserved the bathtub he used to use.
And so we had a good holiday weekend. Hope yours was nice as well.
You visited a lot of places during that weekend. I am sure Kai had a good time. Wow, you sure have the height genes on your side of the family!
ReplyDeleteYes, it was a fun weekend. Haha, my nephews are really tall... I think they got the height genes from my brother-in-law mostly though my sister is relatively tall for a Japanese-American woman.
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