Extended Stay

As I mentioned in my last post I have been quite busy lately. Most recently, Carrie has been in town so we've been doing as much as possible around town. I won't bore you with all of the details but I'll run through the itinerary and hit the highlights. Later in the week I'll catch you up on some of the things I have been up to before Carrie got here.

Carrie's job is headquartered in DC so she was here for work for the week. She came out early so we could have time to see the city together. Here's the highlights! I apologize for the length of the post but we did A LOT of things! 

Thursday

• We stopped by the local farmers market and bought some food for the week
• Dinner at Oyamel, a modern mexican tapas place. Best Brussels sprouts I have ever had in my life.

Friday

• Jog around The Capital, including a beautiful sculpture garden I had never seen. 
• Stopped by the National Gallery of Art to see some select exhibits, including the only Da Vinci in the United States.
• Next we went to the land of Northface jackets, bleached blonde hair, and college kids driving their father's Audi: Georgetown. We ate a late lunch a Belgium cafe and did some shopping. I'm on the search for an awesome coffee mug for work but couldn't find anything. 
• Checked out the Kennedy Center - Millennium Stage for a free jazz concert. 
• Then we headed to Dupont Circle area for pizza and beer. 
• We finished the night back at my condo where my roommates were hosting a party which was a lot of fun.

Saturday: 

• Saturday was pretty dreary and rainy. Per my insistence we went to the National Air and Space Museum. It must have been "annoying children who lack manners" day at the museum because the place was crawling with sticky kids who were oblivious to...well...everything. I almost took a picture of a child leaning over a sign that said "NO LEANING". There are some decent exhibits though. I found the Wright Brothers exhibit very interesting.  
• After lunch we went to the National Portrait Gallery to watch a free jazz show. The jazz was mediocre but the awesome board games they had for people to play were highly entertaining.
• We ended the evening with dinner with one of my roommates at a Spanish tapas place in our neighborhood. My roommate is probably the most knowledgeable person I have ever known when it comes to cooking, restaurants, and food in general. He's a lot of fun to go out with because he knows the perfect things to order at every restaurant. 

Sunday

• We went for another jog in the morning so we could see the Washington, Lincoln, Korean, and Vietnam Memorials. 
• Later we headed to Eastern Market which is a combination of a farmer's market, art show, and bizarre. We really enjoyed all of the cool art. Our favorite was a lady who was selling hand carved figures from Africa. Unfortunately, "Zebras that sit on the edge of shelves" don't go with either of our decor so we couldn't support her. My second favorite was a guy selling prints of old cigarette ads. It's so strange to read them now because they say things like "Most Doctors Smoke Camels!". 
• After brunch at a French Bistro we went to Ted's Bulletin where we got an "adult" milkshake.
• We finished the night at a restaurant called Founding Farmers. It is a popular new restaurant that specializes in local food and overall "green" business practices. 

The rest of the week we were less active because we both had to work. We did manage to hit some good restaurants though, including Ethiopian, Latin American, Indian, and Sushi. 


On Tuesday we caught a concert at The Blackcat, one of the popular alternative music venues in DC. The main band was UK based "British Sea Power". It was a fun show. See the video below for one of their songs. As a fun side note, the day after we were at the concert there was a shooting a block away. Read this article for more details.

Friday was supposed to be Carrie's last night in town. We went to the Wolly Mammoth Theater to see the show "Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind" by the Chicago based "Neo-Futurists". This show was probably the most fun I have ever had at a play. It was incredible. I highly recommended the show to anyone who lives in Chicago. The general concept is that they do 30 plays in 60 minutes. The plays are all done at random based on what number the crowd shouts out. The plays ranged from hilarious, to touching, to profound.  Excellent.

Carrie was supposed to fly out on Saturday morning but St. Louis got hit badly by tornadoes so her flight was delayed until Monday morning.  It was sad she had to miss her family's Easter but I was happy with the extended stay!

All in all it was a great week. We did so much we struggled to remember everything we saw! She gave me a great excuse to check out a lot of the tourist spots I have been wanting to see. 

Sorry for the delay...

Sorry for the delay in posting. I've been extremely busy with work and I was out of town a couple of weekends ago. This past weekend Carrie was in town visiting. On the upside I will have lots of interesting and exciting posts to come! Until my next post, please enjoy this picture from my weekend trip to the Chesapeake Bay.

I will also take this opportunity to shamelessly plug Ben's cooking blog, which I find enjoyable.  www.dinneradventure.blogspot.com

So a guy walks into a bar...

Last night I didn't get home from work until about 9:30 so I decided to stop into the brewpub right around the corner from me for dinner. There was a few open seats at the bar, and after scanning the crowd I found the perfect guy to sit next to- a middle aged man with long hair, a bad suit, and a fisherman's hat who was smelling his own hair. Why would I sit next to the craziest looking guy in the place? Because while 50% of normal looking people have something interesting, intelligent, or fun to say; about 90% about crazy looking people have something entertaining to say.

This leads me to the point of this post. I see a lot of odd people walking around DC. There are different people in every city across the world, but because I walk a lot of places and always take public transit I see (and sometimes meet) a lot of interesting people. Here's a list of a few interesting ones:

• Going downstairs to workout one day the elevator opened to an old man in a tweed suit and bowtie who was on a Segway! I don't know proper Segway etiquette but I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to ride them indoors. 
• While walking to the metro I saw an older woman with long gray hair wearing a short skirt and super bright multicolored tights. I assume she was some sort of burnt out flower child who is now an NPR executive.
• Then there are the numerous people who walk down the street singing at the top of their lungs. What a strange activity. Most of them don't even have headphones in. They're just loving life. Good for them.
• I was taking a cab to a bookstore a couple of weekends ago and my cab driver was extremely well read. After I told him I was going to a bookstore he handed me the pile of books he was reading. They were mostly on foreign affairs and policy. I asked him about one because I didn't recognize the subject: The Republic of Biafra. He proceeded to explain to me the history of Nigeria and the late 60s Nigerian Civil War. Interesting conversation. I tipped him well. 

Oh and the hair-smeller at the bar? Besides an uncanny voice resemblance to the famous movie reviewer, Gene Shalit, he wasn't that interesting. He did spend most of my short stay throwing ice cubes from his glass into the trashcan behind the bar-I'll count that as "entertaining".