There is nothing that quite compares to the east coast in the fall. We had such a quick trip back to DC mainly because the purpose of our visit was to attend a conference, but we still got to squeeze in a few fun touristy things and enjoy the pretty change in season (which we certainly don't get here)! The conference was great in my opinion. There were 44 attendees, mostly researchers from across the US and some from Europe, 7 family's and representatives from both the NIH and FDA. All in all I think we accomplished what we set out to do which was get people involved in a cohesive discussion with the hope that it will enable them to work together in their search for a cure for Batten's.
Jer had never been back to DC before and so we tried to squeeze in a few important places. I would say that the highlight of our trip was a nice evening walk around the monuments followed up by a great dinner at Equinox. We also crammed in visits to Arlington Cemetery, 4 of the Smithsonian museums and my favorite the Holocaust Memorial. I guess that I was too young to really appreciate the Holocaust museum the last go around, but I honestly could have spent 2 days there this trip. Of course we didn't have the time and so we whizzed through there, but I am really still reeling over just how brutal the Holocaust really was. Sounds crazy, because I know we've all learned about it in school, but I am such a visual person and for some reason it really impacted me seeing the videos and replicas of the gas chambers...it was just so sad to think that someone could really kill all of those people just because they had a different belief. I know that I'm not going to solve the problems of humanity in this blog, but I really do encourage anyone that visits DC to go back there and check it out if you haven't.
