Friday, May 12, 2017

Quick Trip to DC

Mark and I have been saying for a while that we should take an overnight trip to DC sometime. I recently found out that one of my favorite musicals was in DC for a few weeks, so I figured that would be the perfect excuse to go spend a night in the city.

Mark found us a room at the State Plaza Hotel, fairly close to the metro and the National Mall. We got there well before check-in time and asked nicely if we could leave our bags with them while we grabbed some lunch, figuring it was too early to check in. Instead, we found ourselves with a free upgrade and early check-in - nice!

The room was like a small apartment, and even had a kitchen. It was pretty sweet.

The view looking west. We were right near the George Washington University, so there was a lot going on down on the streets. I was geeking out because they were landing south at DCA and I could see all of my airplanes.

We hung out in the room for a few minutes, then went out to find some lunch.

We decided to take the scenic route past the White House. I think this might be the sidewalk they closed just a couple days later. We eventually wound up at District Taco, stuffed ourselves with delicious tacos, then went on to our next stop...

...the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. And home of Julia Child's kitchen.

And this guy. The transportation sections were pretty neat, but overall the place was absolutely slammed. It seemed like every school in the area must have picked that specific day for a field trip. At any rate, we did at least see a few cool things before making our way back out to the National Mall.

We passed by the National Museum of African American History and Culture. I've heard that this is a really cool museum, so I'm really looking forward to checking it out someday. It's pretty tricky to get tickets, though; it's so popular that timed tickets get sold out really fast, so the other option is to wake up first thing in the morning and try to grab one of the handful of daily tickets they release each day. I didn't know that was a thing until it was too late to get tickets for the day, so I just settled for admiring the outside of the building for now.

It was a really nice day, so we spent some time wandering around the Mall.



We eventually made our way down to the Lincoln Memorial and took a break on the steps.

We weren't the only ones with that idea.

We poked our heads in to say hello to Lincoln, then wandered back to the hotel. We got cleaned up, then wandered over to Graffiato for dinner. It's owned by Mike Isabella, who was on Top Chef a while ago. Everything was really good (and none of my pictures turned out well, haha), and we were out of there with plenty of time to get to the show.

Ragtime was at the Ford's Theatre, and you could see the box where Lincoln was shot right next to the stage, which was crazy. At any rate, the theater was very cool and the show was fantastic. I've wanted to see this show since I was in high school, so it was great to finally see it in person.

After the show, we were walking to our next stop when we came across this. Creepy!

We eventually made our way to the Jack Rose Dining Saloon. It's got a huuuuge selection of whiskies, so Mark was really looking forward to it. And when we got there (at 11pm on a Tuesday), it was absolutely slammed. We couldn't even get into the downstairs room with all of the cool whisky, and when we did manage to squeeze into the upstairs room that seemed more like a regular bar, it was standing room only and you could barely move at that. I don't even know how we would have gotten up to the bar to get anything to drink. We decided to cut our losses and try again some other time...

...which is how we wound up over at Rebellion. We were almost the only ones here! They had some pretty cool things, so we had a couple drinks and talked to the bartender lady for a little while before heading out.

...and this is how you properly end an evening in DC: pizza. We got an Uber back to the hotel after that and called it a night.

We had originally planned to go for a run through the National Mall the next morning, but when we woke up there was a line of rain moving in. You could see it getting closer, so we decided to skip the run, checked out of the hotel, and got an Uber to Georgetown.

I thought this building looked pretty cool. We started with a really good breakfast at a small bakery, then spent a couple hours wandering through some stores before eventually making our way back to the metro and heading back home. It had been a fun quick trip, and I'd happily do it again sometime!

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