USA Day 34 - family and food

Total States Visited: 23
Where Are We Sleeping Tonight: Heather & Rey's, Maryland :)

First up today we drove out to Arlington Cemetery and visited the Kennedy Shrine. I never knew that Jackie was buried here next to JFK - I just assumed she was buried in the Onassis family crypt in Greece. It was amazing to see the expanse of the cemetery withe the never ending rolling hills of tombstones. It was very humbling to see, knowing that every one buried here died fighting for their country. I was sort of surprised that the cemetery had a gift shop... Just outside the cemetery, we drove over to the Marine Corps War Memorial depicting the Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima. I impressed by how large the statue actually is.

 
 

After negotiating the weirdest roundabout, where traffic on the roundabout gives way (yields) to traffic entering the roundabout, we headed to Maryland to catch up with my cousin Heather and her family. On our way into Baltimore, we stopped for lunch in Hanover where we enjoyed Red Lobster - oh my God! The food was wonderful and crazy cheap - they even have their own version of fritola! I think we may have eaten too much...

 
 

Arriving at my cousin's house, I was excited and nervous. While we are cousins, I haven't seen Heather since the mid 1980's when she came with her mother and grandmother to visit us in Australia, and even then, I barely remember their visit. So while I was excited to catch up with her after all these years, I also felt like I was rocking up on a strangers doorstep, even though we had been chatting via Facebook for ages. We were so excited that Heather and Rey wanted us to visit and I am so glad we did. There is no real way of describing that feeling when family members get together after years apart - time disappears and it's like we had been close for years.

We got to meet Heather & Rey's two girls, the oldest of which is the same age now as Heather was when she came to Australia all those years ago - scary how time flies. We also got to catch up with Heather's mother and we all went to Rey's restaurant for dinner, Illiano's J&P Restaurant - sadly we didn't get to spend much time with Rey as he was working. The food was wonderful, especially the stuffed eggplant, but there was so much food - we just couldn't eat it all (especially as we ate too much for lunch as well).

 
 

Back at their house, we watched "Where the Heart Is" - the film where Natalie Portman gives birth in the WalMart store that she is secretly living in. It was a great movie but I don't think I will ever look at Walmart the same... We unfolded the sofa bed where I got to cuddle their black cat Spanky - I don't know if he gets much attention there normally but he curled up on my lap tonight :)