Alexandria, Virginia, September 9

My early morning flight from NH arrived at DIA mid morning and Justin was able to meet me within a few minutes of my arrival and I hit the ground running as a tourist.  We picked Liz  up at work in the afternoon and then headed over to Alexandria, one of their favorite places to walk around and explore. It is a really pretty city with lots of alleys and shops and places to poke around in.

This is the market place, and prior to the civil war the market place for slaves.

We stumbled up this fascinating sign and decided to go explore.

It was an old torpedo factory that had been turned into an art center.  There were over 80 working studios and 140 some artists.  An eclectic assortment of media...something for everyone.  This is the view from the second story.  Note the paper mache animals on the balcony.

And there was metal work.

I thought this was an ingenious way of using paper from an old book to make a whimsical mobile

                                                                          This was one of the original torpedoes.

Alexandria has a nice water front on the Potomac River.

We  enjoyed walking inside some of the buildings, mainly because they were air conditioned but look what happened while we were inside!  Oops.  I don't know if this was from all of the recent rain or the tide. We had planned to eat at the restaurant on the other side, but had to go to Plan B.

See the little blue house?  It's called a Spite House.  There used to be an alley way in which the "ladies of the night" would gather and make little fires to keep warm.  The house was built  to keep them out of the alley way because there were no city ordinances prohibiting them from being there.

 This was a long, but fun day for me.  It was so nice to see my kids.  Stay tuned.  Justin worked in Washington, D.C. all summer so he has promised to give me several days of touring.