National Harbor

On the Sunday I managed to have time to take a walk around National Harbor. It's fairly new and right on the Potomac. I had a walk along the harbor front. It was very cold!

View of the bridge to DC

Gaylord centre from the harbor front

Along the sea wall

They have quite a few statues dotted around. Some were very interesting.

Not a clue! 

On the first day, this was also in the lobby of the hotel. :-)

Balloon Darlek

 On the last day of the conference I found the tea shop. I have never seen teas that are priced $110 for 2oz! I didn't buy any of those! But I did sit and have a cup of tea and chat to the shop owner, an Air Force Vet who had lots of questions on astronomy! It was great fun. Plus I got a huge tube of green mint tea and some packets of Wine mixers. You add the tea to wine and cold brew. I am really curious. It combines two of my favorite things, wine and tea. So it could either be absolutely amazing or awful. I'll let you know!

Huge tube of green Menthos tea!

Tea wine mixers

And it has been freezing! The Potomac froze! Everyone has been dashing in and staying as close to the centre as possible. Luckily National Harbor is quite small so you can get to all the restaurants fairly quickly. (Seriously I have never felt cold quite like it. It was -15F / -26C with the wind chill one day!)

The frozen Potomac!

Neil Degrasse Tyson talk

On Monday night, Neil Degrasse Tyson gave a talk at the conference, called "Tales from the Twitterverse and other media excursions". It was a really good talk, very funny.

Neil Degrasse Tyson

And again

The best bits were some cartoons he had found and his take on memes, which I found out are those things you remember even if they aren't true, that's passed from person to person. He showed some of the memes around the internet. Here are some of my favorites.

So cute!

The new hulk.

You're a geek if you get it.

He also should some photos of awesome astro tattoos he had some across. Though not for me I think.

This had to hurt

Carl Sagan quote

from the Voyager satellite (minus Pluto

The only time I winced was when he was talking about Brian Cox, who I really don't like.
He also talked about politics relating to science. The only bit I really enjoyed (as I don't follow American Political minutia) was the following. I picked the right state apparently. (Sorry Caroline!)

Virginia is one of the best educated states!

Gaylord National Convention Centre

On Saturday I took the Megabus to Washington DC for the American Astronomical Society (AAS) 223rd National meeting. The meeting was huge with an estimated 3200 people (though I did hear 4000 at one point.) The conference was actually based at the Gaylord Nation Convention Centre (yes that's it's real name) in National Harbor which is a 15 min drive from the centre of Washington. The hotel is really nice, though super expensive. And when I got there, they still had all the christmas things up so it was very pretty.

Christmas tree

The hotel is set up in a U shape. In the middle part, there is an atrium with live trees, birds, some cafes, and a fountain, which 4 times an evening does a light, music and water display. Which was very pretty.

Fountain

Kids train

Little surprises when you walk around

One thing about the hotel is there is no chance of my getting drunk and making a fool of myself. Because a single glass of wine is $12! I have been volunteering to get my registration fees paid, which is actually fun. And I got food vouchers as well so it saved me a lot of money. Though Sunday was a long day. I was on the registration desk from 2 until 8pm without even a bathroom break. So I was exhausted. But it does leave me more money for future travel so a pretty good deal really.