Cherry Blossom Festival, Washington DC

I was lucky enough to have a conference in Washington, DC the first week of April, which happened to tie in with the latter end of the famous cherry blossom festival. Before we get to the pretty pictures though, let me share a fuzzy picture of a living legend:

The great James Watson of Watson & Crick fame, as in discoverers of the structure of DNA! I can't even tell you how excited I was to be in the same room as this man, even if he was very very far away!

Which leads me to the other thing: the scale of this conference was like nothing I have ever seen before, just look at the size of one of the plenary lectures, and this room was full! Incredible!

Being not too fond of crowds I skipped the Rally for Medical Research on the Monday and instead went in search of these famous cherry blossoms, and boy, I was not disappointed! There were a lot of people there too, but at least I was free to move around! Now for pretty pictures:

We're going to the zoo, zoo, zoo...

It would have been silly to waste a train fare to Washington DC on just collecting N's passport from the Dutch embassy right? So we went to check out the Smithsonian (read: free) National Zoo too! Now being free, and in the middle of the capital city, we weren't expecting a whole lot, and thought we'd be home in the afternoon some time. But it's actually really big, and we managed to spend about three and a half hours wandering around!

Admittedly the trip didn't start out quite as planned. We arrived around 11am in the pouring rain which was freezing on the cold ground to find all of the gates closed. After hitting up a conveniently placed Starbucks for their free WiFi we discovered that due to the inclement weather they weren't going to open until noon. Not being ones to give up (and being nice and warm and dry with our hot milky drinks and free internet) we decided to wait it out, and I'm so glad we did. This is one awesome zoo!

We started out on the Asia trail, where many of the animals were inside due to the cold. The first thing we spotted was a fishing cat:

Closely followed by a sleepy red panda, which I don't think I've ever seen before because the ones at Bristol Zoo never seem to be around:

And this may be one of the highlights of my day, a real life giant panda! (One for you Panda :) )

Then we moved on to the bird house which was pretty awesome. I didn't take any photos because it was inside, but we saw some cool birds, like a tiny burrowing owl, and some cool kingfishers. There were loads of cardinals out and about around the zoo, which really stand out this time of year. Possibly my favourite US bird:

There were also some birds outside, including these crazy flamingos, which were making a lot of noise and running back and forth for no apparent reason:

We also saw bustards from a distance which are pretty massive! Talking of massive things, unfortunately we weren't able to see any elephants.

The North America trail was also cool, with some more animals I've never seen before, including these awesome beavers. We just caught them being fed :)

And a wolf. oooooo

Apparently after lunch I forgot to take photos, but we saw lots more awesome animals, including an eye to eye encounter with an orangutan! And some cheetahs. And a Komodo dragon!

All in all, a fun day!

Meeting my models

Hello all!

Admiring the Inner Harbor in the fall sunshine

The past couple of weeks have been a steep learning curve for me, in parts fun and in parts stressful, I've come to Friday exhausted and close to tears two weeks in a row! Not necessarily in a bad way, just sometimes when I'm tired, I can't hold back the tears!

Amazing mochi ice cream!

I've spent a fair amount of time learning the ropes of human cell culture, which is pretty cool. They're fun to look at down a microscope! And I met some mice, from a distance for now. I also got to do some bits and pieces of molecular biology, such as isolating DNA preps from E. coli. Although even the most routine of things is a challenge in a new lab. And not only is it a new lab for me, but it's a new lab full stop, having just moved to UMB from the University of Kentucky. So we're all finding our way around together.

Federal Hill shopping district

There's been a bit of time for fun stuff too. I've visited the famous Lexington Market with my colleagues several times, and finally went there with N yesterday (it's about 5 minutes from our back door, not somewhere to venture alone maybe, but worth going for the fooooodddd). And N and I have been doing some more exploring in Baltimore, visiting the Inner Harbour, as always, and today discovering the Federal Hill shopping district, which has shops and restaurants on a street! Like not in a mall! So cool! And a great secondhand bookshop, which I will definitely be going back to if I ever get paid!!!

Sunday lunch at Corner Bakery Cafe