Potomac Riverboat Cruise

The Awakening Sculpture

By now most of you know that the girls and I went to DC last week. We were there for about a week and everyday we were there we went on some sort of adventure. Some of the places we went to were old and familiar to me but made new because I am now sharing them with my own children. And some of the places were new to me. We went to Washington Harbor and it was mix of new adventure and old adventure....

Washington Harbor was the starting point of our day long Potomac River adventure. The Harbor is new and has lots of cool places to eat and shop. What made it old and familiar is the famous sculpture, The Awakening. It was on display in East Potomac Park (I remember climbing on it as a child) but in 2008 it was sold and relocated to the new harbor. 

I think both Maddy and Kate were a little scared at first... I mean look at it. It's a sculpture of a huge metal giant coming out of the ground. Fear quickly turned into fascination and soon both girls were climbing all over it.



The Harbor is also home to the Peeps and Company store. Yes, I said Peeps, as in the delicious marshmallow chicks we all love or love to hate (depending on your taste for marshmallows). The whole store is filled with nothing but Peeps, Mike & Ikes, and Hot Tamales candy and official  merchandise. Anyone need a $20 Peeps water bottle?!?! Also, did you know that just as Buffalo wings come in varying degrees of "hotness" so do Hot Tamales?!? Crazy...

You may be wondering why would Peeps open a store in Washington DC? Every year the Washington Post newspaper holds a Peeps candy diorama contest.  The store displays some of the dioramas and it's walls are covered in Peep art. The picture at the bottom of this collage is just one of the dioramas entered in the Peep Show....

After Granddaddy purchased all of his girls a souvenir from the store we got back in the car and drove over to Old Town Alexandria to board a riverboat cruise of the Washington monuments. I've seen all of the monuments dozens of times before but never from a boat, plus we thought Maddy would love a boat ride.

The whole cruise took about 2 hours. An added bonus of the cruise was that we got to watch planes take off and land at Reagan National airport and we got a pretty good view of Granddaddy's latest building project, the future US Coast Guard headquarters. It was a nice way to spend a hot summer day. You know me, I took a ton of pictures so be sure to check out the web album below for more.

Web Album