Our Nation's Capital: Washington DC

So after a late night (early morning) last hurrah in NYC, I wake up late and hungover for the resumption of my trip. Ugggh. I was supposed to stop by Philadelphia to see the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall, then have a lunch of Philly cheesesteak before heading down to Washington DC, but I just couldn't do it. I couldn't wake up and leave early enough. So, I drive straight on to DC. Philly will have to wait for another day....

I get to DC in the early evening and head to Seth's place, an old friend from SF who now lives in DC. (Traffic in DC is horrible.) We then have a nice dinner at this new Asian-Fusion place, and proceed to Halo, the bar next door. Enjoying the drinks too much (overpriced at $10 a pop! but with happy hour two-for-one until midnight, it wasn't so bad), we completely forget that we had parked my car at the Whole Foods garage across the street. Uhm, which closes at midnight! When we go to get the car and find out that we are locked out until 8 am, we had no choice but to go back to the bar of course and continue drinking....

The next day I hop in a cab to pick up my car and do some sightseeing:

I had been to DC before but had never been to the FDR Memorial. It is inspiring! And the current occupants of the white house would do well to take heed of what FDR espoused all those years ago.

The other memorial I hadn't been to (as it's fairly new) is the WWII Memorial. What struck me as interesting was how they had a wreath/monument for all of the US states and territories (e.g. Guam and Puerto Rico), but they ALSO had one for the Philippines, which is neither a state or territory of the United States.

It could be because the Philippines fought alongside the US in WWII, but so did the other Allies like the UK and France. Yet, they didn't have a memorial for those other allies. Hmmmmm. Could it be we're already the 51st state (as I keep joking about)?

That weekend I had a grand tour of Georgetown University (and all the nooks and crannies of Seth's alma mater, where secret activities occurred), and walked around Georgetown (the town) a little too. It started raining though so we couldn't walk around as much as we wanted. I also got a haircut from a Peruvian salon -- nice cut, but they didn't offer me a beer this time! Note to self: I must have been on the road too long now to need another haircut!

Needles to say Friday and Saturday nights were fun nights out. Saturday was a big dance event with Junior Vasquez spinning. We were half hoping Madonna would make a surprise visit as JV is a friend of hers and has remixed a few of her songs. Turns out that the rumors about NYC and Roxy were true, only it was happening this weekend, not the weekend before when I was @ Roxy. Darn. I missed her by about a week. I heard the place was packed! Oh well, I had fun @ Nations in DC too.

That Sunday night I was going to cook dinner, but we were running out of time and getting hungry, so we go to this nice restaurant instead. There was a 45 minute wait for a table, so we were getting ready to hunker down at the bar when this guy who Seth had just met the night before @ Nations comes over and aks us if we would like to join them. They had a table for four and there were only two of them. They had overheard the hostess telling us of the wait. I thought that was really nice of them!

Monday night was a quiet night in, to recover from the weekend. I cooked dinner. Seth had convinced me to stay a couple more days, so I visited the Lincoln memorial, a memorial to another awe-inspiring President, and the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

All in all I spent a week in DC! Much longer than I had intended. But I had a great time. (Other than the DC traffic) Thanks again Seth! More revealing pics of DC nightlife not appropriate for this blog are available. Wink Wink. If you read this far and are interested, email me and I'll send you a link.