Washington DC, June 2014 - DAY 1

Preface - this trip combined work and fun. My husband joined me for a quick weekend before a work conference. Much of the entries are focused on eating in DC, along with a few tourist attractions that I had time to sneak in.

Day 1:

Let me start by saying that I have never been less prepared for a trip than I was for this one. My goal had been to leave work early on Thursday to get everything done that I needed to get done before picking the kids up from the their last day of school before summer vacation. Instead, I worked late and had to run and get the kids. Friday was a day off for all of us, but instead of doing the boring responsible thing and packing, I took the kids to Six Flags! We are season pass holders and met up with their cousins who are also season pass holder. It’s a super cheap, fun way to spend a day, but pretty exhausting even when you are taking it easy. Following Six Flags, I rushed to get my son to an appointment. We didn’t get home until about 6:30pm. At that point, I had nothing packed, had not grocery shopped so that my mom, who would be staying at our house with the kids, would have something to feed them, and had not even printed out my boarding passes. Cue full on panic mode. In short, I ended up using a method of packing that I have dubbed “throw as much clothing in the suitcase as will fit and hopefully have stuff you need.” It was mostly successful.

I was up until midnight getting everything done around the house, including taking a quick shower. My husband and I then woke up at what can only be described as the a$$ crack of dawn to get to the airport for our 6:25 flight. We made it with plenty of time, sat a stared vacantly into space while waiting to board, then rested our eyes a bit on the plane. It is a very short and sweet flight, though, so that is a plus. We arrived at DCA, also known as National or Reagan. This is the best airport to fly into in the DC area because it is on the Metro. The other DC airport, Dulles, will not be on the Metro until the Silver Line is completed in 2018. (Which, by the way, is the largest public transit project in the country right now, a portion of which is scheduled to open in July.)

It turns out that we landed in the old terminal. It was so dated and weird looking, it would not be out of place in a former Soviet block country. It was clearly under construction, and I hope to God am sure that there are plans to update it. In order to get from there to the metro, you need to take a shuttle. So, after getting my overly stuffed suitcase, we headed outside to hop on the shuttle. It came right away, and the trip was relatively short, though it was not clear which stop we were supposed to get off at. Luckily, the first stop turned out to be right. The walk from there to the Metro was very short and easy. We got on the Yellow line to Gallery Place, were we transferred to the Red line to Union Station. Luckily, given that it was barely 8 am, the train was pretty empty, which made it a bit easier with my large suitcase. It was then that I realized that I would need to reverse this in several days – without my husband to pull the large suitcase – and began to regret my packing strategy frenzy.

From Union Station, where we were greeted by a homeless man asking for money and calling us names when we refused, it was a short walk to our hotel. The work conference I was attending was held at the Hyatt Regency Capitol Hill. It’s an awesome location, very close to Union Station, and an easy walk to the Mall as well as many good restaurants. The rooms are very basic, fairly small, with pretty tiny bathrooms. Probably still large by European standards, but smaller than most hotels I have stayed at recently. The bed is VERY comfortable, as are the pillows. The linens and towels are nothing special. The TV sucks as it does not appear to have just regular cable, or is so hard to figure out that a person of average to high intelligence who is pretty good with technology (that would be me) could not figure it out. There was no fridge, but as I would later learn, they delivered one to my room upon request. It has a good sized safe and other standard amenities. One of my big pet peeves these days is with hotels that charge for wifi. I just think that’s horrible. I am paying enough for the room – bake it into the price, especially in a conference hotel where the employer is often the one paying for the room! Luckily I had a good cellular signal in my room, so I survived without it. I did not try the hotel restaurant or room service because there are too many good spots pretty close by for me to waste a meal on hotel food. The fitness center was nice, with big windows and plenty of machines, as well as towels and cold water. My only complaint there was that they had NOTHING to wipe the machines down with to sanitize before and after use. I wiped it with a towel and water, but I am not fooling anyone – that is not sufficient. The pool looked clean but small.

We decided along the way to stop for breakfast at a Corner Bakery Café. This is a chain like Panera that seems to be all over the DC area. Not sure how far beyond DC it goes, but we do not have them in CT. I went with the Commuter Croissant, which was egg, cheese, tomato, and bacon on a croissant. As I told my husband, a croissant sandwich is like a trigger food for me – I will order it no matter what’s in the middle. He offered some unappetizing possibilities, which I will not share, but suffice to say that even the addition of the croissant probably would not be enough. Probably.

We then rolled our way to the hotel, where I checked in with the naïve hope that our room would maybe be ready. Nope. So we stowed our bags at the Bell desk, grabbed a map, and settled on a morning plan to head to Georgetown. It was a short walk to the bus stop to get on the DC Circulator, but made much longer because I had to stop and get cash at a CVS a few blocks away – a visit to the ATM before I left had been one of several things I forgot to do in my last minute packing frenzy. Turned out, our SmartTrip cards were all that was needed, so getting cash right then was totally unnecessary, but I didn’t know that until we actually got on the bus. If you visit DC, it’s very much worth getting a SmartTrip card, unless you are making the unwise choice to forgo public transit. The cards are $2 each. However, if you use a paper farecard, $1.00 is added to each trip! That adds up quickly if you are taking the Metro a lot. The SmartTrip card pays for itself in just one roundtrip.

Georgetown is one of the few spots in DC that is not easily accessible by the Metro. It’s either a fairly long walk from say the Foggy Bottom stop, or you have to get on the Circulator. The Circulator is a very nice bus system. They are extremely clean, have easy to read maps, and decent operating hours. It is, however, far slower than the Metro. If you are trying to get to Georgetown in a hurry, it’s probably best to take the Metro to Foggy Bottom and then cab it over. But this worked really well for us, and we a saw a lot of the city out the window.

We got off the bus at 31^st and K Street in Georgetown, where we crossed the street and checked out the waterfront park. Although the day was overcast and we kept get hit with passing showers, the park was beautiful. It had a lovely view of the Key Bridge and was pretty busy given the weather and early hour. We headed (I think) west in the park, until we came to a big condo/mixed used development. It looked like it had been built in the 1980s, but was very much still a happening spot. There were several restaurants, huge fountains, and of course the waterfront view. We stopped at the Starbucks as I now felt that I needed some caffeine. The four hours of sleep was definitely catching up with me. We then wandered down H Street, popping into a couple of shops here and there. One place seemed like a cool local shop that sold handmade cosmetics, and I was definitely going to buy something, until the salesperson informed me that not only are they a national chain, they have a location in our local mall! Bo-ring.

Pretty lily pad pond at G.U.

Old bank on a corner in Georgetown. I believe it is now a PNC.

Cool view of the Key Bridge through a fountain near the water.

Pretty typical Georgetown row houses.

We walked, and walked, and walked some more, and saw a lot of Georgetown, including the eponymous university. The architecture is spectacular, and it’s a very unique place. The university has building that look very much like the buildings at my law school, I was surprised to find.

Weird and unexplained old boat in canal in Georgetown.

Another example of Georgetown's amazing architecture 

We then took a crazy steep staircase that gave us both vertigo back down to H Street, where we walked in the opposite direction. I stopped in a bricks and mortar West Elm, which is one of my favorite online stores, for the first time! It was great to see many of the things I admire online in person. By then, we were totally burnt out, and luckily our hotel had called to say that our room was ready. We decided that we would go back and take a nap! For parents of school aged children, in their thirties, going on four hours of sleep, a nap is such a luxury.

We had to set our alarm so that we could make our late lunch reservation at one of my favorite restaurants in the world, Founding Farmers. Last time I came to DC, I tried to get in and faced a 2 hour wait, so this time I called ahead for reservations, though apparently I did not call soon enough because a 2:45 was the best I could get for lunch. 

We slept as long as we dared, then jumped in a cab to try and get to the restaurant as quickly as possible. We were about ten minutes late, but we got seated within about 5 minutes. It seemed that the lunch crowd was starting to dissipate by then. The food was amazing, as I had experienced last year. I ordered the same entree on both of my visits – low country shrimp and grits with Andouille sausage. We also shared the farmer’s salad and skillet cornbread, both of which were excellent.  The skillet cornbread was by far the best cornbread that I have ever had. With the honey butter, I was more like corn cake. I ordered a lager to drink and my husband went with a soda that is apparently made there. It was pricey at $5, but was very flavorful. He went with vanilla, which was the least interesting choice. I would have picked hibiscus. On my previous visit, I tried a few different apps, including the fried green tomatoes and a couple of the flatbreads – all delicious. I truly don’t think that you can go wrong.

The only complaint that I have was with the service. It was not so bad that I reduced my tip. The server herself was fine, a little odd, but fine. It just took SO long for our food to come out. It also took a very long time from when the server first came over to when we actually placed our drink order. Two different servers asked us about drinks, and neither seemed to know what the beers on tap were. A table of two sat down after us, and they had drinks and an appetizer (the fried green tomatoes – good choice, ladies) before we placed our drink order. They also had nearly finished their meal and left before our meal came – and we basically ordered the same thing. It was just kind of bizarre. Luckily, we were not in a hurry and just enjoyed each other’s company and the cool vibe in the restaurant.

We skipped dessert in favor of going to a second spot that would also be a repeat for me – Co Co. Sala. When we left, we impulsively decided to walk, and I am glad that we did. We again saw a lot of the city, and were able to work up some room for dessert. The only less fun part about the walk was that I had drunk so much water, plus my large beer, that I had to pee multiple times. The first spot I tried was a Starbucks, and they had key codes for the bathrooms. Luckily for me, they gave it to me without making me buy something. (I was prepared with a response if they told me it was for customers only – whipping out my Starbucks app and telling them how much money I have spent there in my lifetime.) Several blocks later, a lot of places had closed up at 4pm on a Saturday. I tried McDonalds, but that was “for customers only” and I did not think that the fact that I had, as recently as last month, been a McDonalds customer would be sufficient there.

Finally we made it to Co Co. After running to the ladies’ room, which is one of the strangest bathroom setups I have ever seen, we ordered cocktails and dessert. I went with a cucumber cocktail, which I had not tried on my previous visit. We shared the “Latin Love Affair” dessert, which was spectacular. It had three parts to it – a passionfruit truffle, pecan ice cream or gelato, and a heart shaped confection consisting of a pecan cake base, caramel filling, and dulce de leche mousse. This was the perfect amount of food for us to share after stuffing ourselves at Founding Farmers. Each bite was sigh-worthy. And I did sigh several times. And moan a little. The real star, in my opinion, was the passionfruit sauce that was artfully streaking the plate. I would have liked about twice as much of that, but the way it played off the caramel notes was just incredible, with a tart yet sweet contrast that made my mouth water.

After Co Co it was off to the Nationals game. We took the Metro – Green line from Gallery Place to Naval Yards / Stadium. It’s only a few stops and was super easy, if a bit crowded with fellow game goers.  We got there at about 6 pm for a 7:15pm game, so we spent some time walking around the neighborhood which we had heard was “up and coming.” It is definitely still coming, as there is a lot of construction and several new developments, but not a whole lot to see right around the stadium. Perhaps a few blocks further would have been more interesting, but we decided to spend the rest of our time browsing in the Nationals store. Both of our kids are baseball fans, so we wanted to get them a souvenir from here. It was far less crowded than after the game last time we were here, though it’s still a relatively small space and can be hard to get around without bumping into people every other step. We settled on a picture of a player for my son and a notebook and pen for my daughter.

Because we were only buying 2 seats instead of the usual 4 or 5, we were able to get very nice seats, and still and at a steep discount compared to similarly situated seats at Yankee Stadium. It was definitely the closest I have ever been at a major league game, and it was totally awesome. We did have a fairly obnoxious Braves fan (that was the visiting team) behind us with a very strong, possibly affected, Southern accent. He was loud and opinionated. He also told people sitting near him that he would be much worse, and more drunk, the next day, so I guess we got lucky. The game itself was a lot of fun, if you like baseball. It was very low-scoring, sort of a defensive match up. Ultimately, the Nationals won, which was nice, though we don’t really have a horse in the race, so to speak. We both wore our Yankees caps.

View from out seats! Wish we could do this at Yankee Stadium.

We were still very full after all the awesome food we had today, but by about the seventh inning I decided to try some chili cheese nachos that I found recommended on a website. They were just ok. The chili was not flavorful at all, and it was all served lukewarm, which meant that the cheese did not melt at all. My hubby went with some fries that I did not even bother trying. If I am getting fries there, it will either be chili cheese fries from Ben’s or box frites. He got a can of Flying Dog IPA while I had a plain Dasani. I wish that I had remembered to buy a bottle of water from the vendors before coming in – half the price for twice as much water.

We left at the top of the eighth inning, home team up by three, and two outs, just to get a jump on the crowd. That worked really well, though we ended up walking a couple of blocks too far for the Metro, so we realized that by the time we circled back, it would be packed anyway. We decided to just walk back to our hotel. The night was warm but not hot and it was a pretty straight shot right down New Jersey Ave. It gave us, yet again, a great perspective of the city between the waterfront and the Capitol. We had to walk right by the Capitol building, which is perhaps even more imposing at night than in the day. There was also a fancy event happening there with people is formal wear circulating outside.

The Capitol at night - surreal.

That would have been it for us – the early flight and all of that walking was extremely tiring – but I actually had to stay up a bit later so that I could get Fast Pass Plus reservations for our August trip to Disney. I am glad that I did, though, because one of the most popular ones was already sold out for our first day and only available late in the evening for our second day.