Arlington, VA (USA)

[I've been bugging the girls about some gift cards they got for their birthday early in 2012 - they never spent them when they still lived in Texas - now, they had more (from Christmas) - I guess I am a little tired of the "I have nothing to wear" refrain, so I "made" them get ready to go shopping around 0900 today - we drove over to the Metro station and took the train to Pentagon City (which I had scoped out on the previous afternoon's commute home) - I knew their minds (and/or attitudes) would change once they saw the stunning size of the Fashion Centre mall... - we got there early enough (1015) that there was almost nobody there - I had planned to convert some Euro coins at the kiosk, but they only took paper money (...) - as for the girls' shopping: it turned out that the mall had almost every store their cards were from, and we spent about four hours (including lunch at the food court) shopping and exploring - we had several big bags when we headed back to the Metro platform - unfortunately, the trains were so far apart that we weren't going to get ours for about 15 minutes - I convinced everyone to take the train two stops down to Reagan National Airport and we explored some shops there (Nicky seemed excited about a couple, since they are outside the security area and can be accessed quickly and easily - made it back to the platform just in time for our train - home a little before 1600, with lots of loot...]