Last Day In Washington

Our last day in DC started out perfectly with blue sky and sun. We decided to take the Metro into the city to take another look at the cherry blossoms before the crowds started. We noticed last night, while sitting in traffic, that the blossoms were turning pink from the white we had seen on Tuesday. Oddly, you can’t get really close to the Tidal Basin area from any Metro stop so we started off with a fairly long, but enjoyable walk. All around the basin and in the Mall workers were setting up stages and porta potties in preparation for the festival this weekend. Unfortunately, it’s supposed to be cool and stormy all weekend. We took a bit of time to check out the blossoms before heading back to the subway to visit Georgetown.

We also found out that you can’t take the Metro to Georgetown! There is some kind of shuttle bus and regular buses as well but, it was nice so we decided to walk. It took maybe 20 minutes before we were in Georgetown and found the main strip. The strip area is fairly touristy with many restaurants and shops. They don’t have a lot of coffee places so that was our first task. After our caffeine infusion, we walked down to the waterfront and found a river tour just about to leave. There were seats left so we hopped on for a 45 minute tour on the Potomac that highlighted the main attractions.

After lunch, we continued to walk around Georgetown’s residential areas. It was interesting to see the colonial style homes. There was some distinctive architecture and many interesting design features as you can see below. 

Tonight, we were going to go to a Memphis BBQ place in Crystal City but the reviews were pretty much all bad. So, we decided to go back to downtown Alexandria one more time for dinner. And, it was worth it. The temp was 28, the sun was out and the area was crowded. It was a perfect way to end our trip. We went to a place called Virtue that was in a 1700s building. It was a bar/restaurant with a good selection of beers and NCAA b-ball on the TVs.

 This is my oyster po' boy. It looks like a salad from this angle but, trust me, it was a great sandwich with tons of oysters.

This is Marilyn's seafood chowder. It had smoked haddock, mussels, clams, and shrimp. We'll be trying to recreate this one at home too.
We were going to try to visit Philly or Pittsburgh on the way home tomorrow but the weather is supposed to be terrible, with possible thunder storms. So, we're just driving home. Thanks for reading and following along with us!

Changes And Kitchenware

Thursday was a day of changed plans. We were going to go to Chesapeake Bay to basically check out a crab shack. But the day dawned grey and foggy again so we decided to take the RAV into the city to visit Arlington National Cemetery and then go for a drive into the countryside.


Arlington Cemetery is a very solemn and moving place to visit. We arrived at about 9:30 and there were already many buses there dropping off classes of kids. Seeing the thousands and thousands of white crosses reminds you of the sacrifices that have been made by so many to safeguard our freedom. There are a lot of famous grave markers, like the Kennedys, but mostly it’s about the thousands of men and women who have died in all of the wars. It is well worth a visit if you are ever in the area.

 This is a commemorative quilt honouring people from all 50 states. Each uniform has a childhood picture of an actual soldier lost in battle.

 This is John F. Kennedy's family grave site.

We then travelled out into rural Virginia to check out the satellite installation of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. It’s near Dulles Airport about 30 minutes from Washington. The museum is a giant hangar filled with over 80 aircraft from the beginning of flight to space vehicles. Some of the more famous planes included the Enola Gay which dropped the atomic bombs on Japan in 1945, the Enterprise space shuttle and assorted Gemini and Apollo capsules. The museum was also in the movie Transformers 3. If you are any kind of a flight nerd, then you have to visit this place. I put it up there with Iberico ham in how impressed I was!

Our next stop was a Premium Outlet Mall in Leesburg, Virginia. We were kind of looking for information on the local wine regions but thought we should check out the stores as well. They had all of the usual clothes and shoe stores but we discovered a Williams Sonoma Outlet where everything we bought was 30% off! And their tax was less! We found quite a few things that we “needed”. It turned out that the wineries were farther away than we thought and I was dubious about wines from Virginia anyway, so we decided to head back to DC for dinner.

This was a mistake. We drove into the city very slowly due to construction. When we got close to where we wanted to be I was almost out of gas and traffic was pretty much gridlocked everywhere. We managed to find gas but everywhere we tried to go was a zoo. There is nowhere to park! Most places in the city don’t seem to have garages so street parking is the norm. After about 2 hours of slowly touring the city, we decided to just come back home to Alexandria to find dinner. We enjoyed a nice walk down to the waterfront area of Alexandria in the summery weather and had pretty much a comfort food dinner. We were going to drive into Georgetown to explore tomorrow but after today’s traffic fiasco, we’ll be using the Metro again!!!

Crawfish beignets with spicy remoulade sauce.

 Really crispy fried chicken with mac and cheese. Definitely comfort food after an ugly drive.

Marilyn's seafood cob salad with shrimp, scallops and lump crab meat!

Classy Waterfront Lunch

More on the lunch later! Today was overcast and grey. I think we lucked out yesterday with some sun for our visit to the cherry blossoms. We headed off to the Capitol Building first but found that it was largely being renovated. There were scaffolds and tarps all over. 

 This was the first time, surprisingly, that we've seen heavily armed guards. There were more guys on the stairs.

We walked back over to the Mall to see the Smithsonian Museum of American History. It was really interesting with everything from slavery to wars to modern culture. The only downside was that our main reason for visiting was to see Julia Child's kitchen. She donated it after she moved to California. Instead of the kitchen, we got the sign below!

As we wandered around the streets of the Capitol area, we found the Canadian Embassy. We really hoped that they had a Timmie's but, no. For some reason, our embassy is by itself and all the other embassies are near Dupont Circle. Not sure if that's a good or bad thing.

Now, for the classy lunch. I'd read about the Maine St. Fish Market online so we decided to walk down to the waterfront and check it out. In some ways it was pretty amazing. There was an incredible number of different kinds of fresh fish and shellfish. And each seafood vendor had an attached kitchen where they would cook seafood. The guys would call out to you to get you to buy their stuff. People would just stand around the parking areas and eat. Trouble was, the parking areas were really pretty ugly. We bought our lunches, a crab cake sandwich for Marilyn and a softshell crab sandwich for me, and started walking. There was nowhere to sit! The final picture below shows where we ended up. At least it was near the water and it had a private bathroom on site! 

 This was my softshell crab sandwich. It was sort of like eating a big, deep fried spider. I think I could eat fried grasshoppers quite easily!

 Marilyn's crab cake sandwich.

I guess it looks a bit like a prison, but it served the purpose. The red drinks are what everyone was ordering. Turned out to be super sweet strawberry iced tea.
After "lunch" we headed over to the White House. Talk about security! There were secret service people all over and in the famous black Suburbans. We even saw a group of soldier types up on the roof with guns and what looked like shoulder mounted missles! 

Our last visit of the day was to the Pentagon to see the 9-11 memorial. The Pentagon is not made to be a tourist destination for sure. There were only a few people there and guards were quite evident. There was no photography except at the memorial. The memorial consists of a display of benches made for each of the victims. You can see in the photograph the part of the building that was replaced after the attack. 

 After our lunch, we decided on a more normal type of dinner. We ended up at Legal Seafood in Crystal City. It was a great, relaxing dinner after a long day.

 Maryland She-crab soup. 

Mediterranean Calamari with olives, feta, capers and banana peppers.

 Cajun striped bass with chilled lobster and corn and black bean salsa.

Crab crusted arctic char with grilled shrimp and sweet potato mash. 

First Day In Washington

First, I have to apologize for yesterday's post. Blogger was driving me crazy with funny spacing and so on. Hopefully, today will be better...
We started today with a decision not to try to drive into Washington. The road in front of the hotel, which goes into the city, was jammed from when we got up until we were ready to leave. So, we took the free shuttle to the subway and it ended up being the best way to go. It's a very clean and efficient subway system that we'll use for the rest of the trip.

As you can see, it's a fairly industrial looking system, but it works well. 
We are very lucky to have arrived in Washington when the cherry blossoms are blooming. In a normal year, they wouldn't be out for at least another week. With the warm winter this year, they are early. The festival is on now and they are celebrating the centennial of the trees being here. As a result, you can't turn around without running into some kind of photographer. And, it's hard to stop taking pictures of the blossoms!

After walking around the Tidal Basin, where the blossoms are, we visited both the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials.

Following that, we walked to the memorials for the Korean War, Second World War and the Vietnam War. All of them were quite moving.

By this time, we were quite hungry so we hopped on the Metro and went to the Eastern Market which I'd read about. It was supposed to be like the St. Lawrence, but it wasn't. Quite small by comparison. But, across from it there was a Salvadorean restaurant that was featured on Diners Drive Ins and Dives! The foodies out there will understand how excited we were to try it out. We had a great lunch for not much money and it was delicious. I had a pupusa plate and Marilyn had chicken breast wrap. We had sides like sweet plantain, yucca fries, black beans and salad.

As we came out of the restaurant, we noticed a ratty looking liquor store on another corner. We didn't chance going in and I really hope we don't have relatives in DC.

Our final cultural event of the day was to visit the Smithsonian Air and Space museum. Incredibly, all of the Smithsonian museums are free! I know this one was mostly for me because I'm a plane and space nerd.

Our last event of the day was dinner in Crystal City at a Spanish restaurant called Jaleo. Crystal City is a part of DC near Reagan Airport, about 10 minutes from our hotel. We had an incredible tapas meal and I bought the chef's cookbook so there will be some tapas at home in the near future. Here's what we had:

The top picture is a salad, sort of like a Nicoise, with preserved tuna, potatoes, eggs, tomatoes etc. Beside the salad are some pieces of toast with a nice tomato sauce and manchego ham. The next picture is of Iberico ham. It's like super prosciutto. Marilyn said I was in ham heaven as I was eating this. I think I said something about ambroisia. Oh, I did share! Iberico ham comes from special black pigs that only eat special acorns in a specific part of Spain. 
Then we had some serrano ham croquettes that basically melted in our mouths as we ate them. Finally, we had a type of pasta dish called Rossejat. It's made of small pieces of pasta and seafood prepared like a paella. Amazing!