Life After Work: 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.