Lead Baby

Yuri's friends who are visiting the US from Istreal came to Washington DC for a quick visit. It was fun to see Yuri animated and excited talking about who knows what -- because it was all in Russian, I just could see smiles & know that it must be good.
We learned that you should always always always run the hotel you are staying at through tripadvisor.com -- even if it's a chain place - run it through in case there is something you might want to know about that exact location, or about some random construction project that's happening that could impact your stay. They were in a rough part of DC, it didn't feel safe. Even our taxi driver said we shouldn't stay there if we could avoid it because bad things happen in and outside of the hotel -- anytime a hotel has bullet proof glass in the lobby, you know it can't be good. Read the reviews here -- you might have a laugh -- if you didn't have to stay there. I felt bad that they came all this way and were taken advantage of that way -- it wasn't much cheaper than the place we stayed but we noticed there were other people from Isreal there, so I imagine someone is getting prizes for sending people along. Poor things.