Washington, DC

I spent most of Friday in Washington, DC hanging out with my friend Joe Sandillo who I know from my time at the University of Florida. But it seemed to take a long time to travel just 30 or so miles to get to DC from Baltimore. I took Baltimore’s Light Rail to Penn Station after waiting 20 minutes for the train to arrive. It seemed to take another 20 or more minutes to get to Penn Station. So much time, in fact, that although I left the hotel at 9:30 I barely made it to Penn Station in time to get my ticket for the 10:50 MARC commuter train to Washington. It was a relief to finally get to Joe’s. He recently bought a condo in the Logan Circle neighborhood at N St. and 14th St. and I was excited to see him and his new home. We had lunch al fresco at a nearby restaurant and then took a long walk through his neighborhood up to Meridian Hill Park overlooking the city and then back down to the DuPont Circle area. It was nice to be away from tourists and since I have been to DC many times and seen most of the tourist attractions, I didn‘t really care what we did. I think the highlight of the day for me was sitting outside at a bar on 17th Street, having a few beers, catching up, and talking about old time. Good times; good times.

Drew came back from his class that evening and the three of us, along with Joe’s friend Andrew, went to a restaurant called Marvin in the U Street neighborhood. U Street was historically the cultural center of African American Washington, sort of the Harlem of DC, but today it has become a neighborhood of various groups and seems to be going through a renaissance. Many of the establishments are named for Jazz greats like Duke Ellington and others. Marvin is a restaurant named for Marvin Gay and the food is a mixture of Southern and Belgian food as Marvin Gay once spent several years in Belgium. They had a large menu of Belgian beers and mussels. For dinner, I had fried chicken on top of a waffle. It seemed at first like a strange combination, but I enjoyed the flavor of chicken, waffle, and maple syrup and would have it again. After dinner, we walked down the street to a bar called Nellie’s and hung out on the roof deck for a little while. Drew and I felt like two old men when we pooped out at 11:00 and went back to our hotel. Going out on the town is just not what it used to be when we were young.

Saturday, Drew and I still had half a day before our flight home but had no plans as to what we wanted to do before then. After breakfast we decided to go to the National Cathedral which is a straight shot up Massachusetts Ave. from our hotel in Dupont Circle. As we waited for a taxi in front of our hotel we noticed a long line forming at the Portuguese embassy across the street (Mass. Ave. is often called Embassy Row). We wondered what it was about as they didn’t look like asylum seekers or anything, but didn’t pay to much attention to it. Once in the taxi heading to the cathedral we learned that it was European Union Embassies’ open house day. We passed several more on our way up the street and were especially impressed with the goings-on at the British embassy. We made a quick loop through the cathedral and then walked back down the street to the British embassy. Out in front a children’s choir was singing Let It Be and the gates where decorated with union jack bunting. Once inside, we were able to walk through the gardens of the ambassador’s residence, take pictures, listen to bag pipes, try some scotch, and browse the booths. We probably stayed for about 45 minutes. The anglophile in me was in heaven and I kept wondering what Hyacinth Bucket (from the BritCom Keeping Up Appearances) would think about my getting to go to a garden party at the ambassador’s. We didn’t have time to go to any of the other embassies and by then the lines were getting long anyway. We met my friend Donald Hitchcock for lunch who filled us in on all the political goings-on behind the scenes in DC--he and his partner Paul are very well connected politically--and then drove us to the airport for our flight home.

It was nice to travel with my friend Drew again as it had been sometime since we had gone on a trip together and I found it interesting that my trip that began with a visit to Fort McHenry ended with a visit to the British Embassy. Thanks Drew for a great trip.

Here is a link to some pictures I posted on Facebook (you do not need to be a member of Facebook to view them):

Just click here to view pictures.