As I am a compulsive planner, I had our 2 day stay mapped out weeks before hand. Unfortunately I tried to pack a bit too much into 48 hours and so we didn't get to do everything we wanted to. But I'm sure we'll be back another day!
Day 1 - we drove into town and checked in at our hotel. Stuart was immediately upset because he realized we were staying at the same hotel as a Teamsters convention. Bring on the first political convo of the trip as I am pro-union and he is against =) As a side note, most of the Teamsters looked like they could have walked off the set of The Sopranos. Stuart's angst didn't last long though, because when we walked up to the desk we were greeted as "Hilton Gold Members". At first we didn't know what that means, but apparently when you both have traveled about a million miles in the past year and stayed at as many hotels as we've had to, you rack up reward points! Basically now we can get fancy room upgrades and the thing Stuart is most excited about? Free Diet Coke in the "members' lounge"! Haha gotta love him.
It was about lunch time, so we took the Metro to Stuart's restaurant request of the week: Old Ebbit Grill. Even though his last meal here was tainted by a ... "gastric event" we'll call it ... it's still his favorite place! Funny enough we both ordered the same thing - Salmon salad. It was a delicious meal and we enjoyed people-watching just as much as the food I think.
After that we headed to the National Archives. Believe it or not I had been there and Stuart never had. It's the place where our nation's important documents are held: The Constitution, Declaration of Independence, etc. It honestly brings tears to my eyes to see them! (As an aside ... my how far our nation has gone from those original documents ...) Anyways, there was also this super neat exhibit on the Cuban Missile Crisis (never thought I'd say that). Turns out I knew pretty much nothing about that time in our history, and suffice it to say I now respect our presidents much more. You never know what kind of crazy things they have to decide in a day.
And of course I wouldn't be happy if we went to an awesome town and didn't eat awesome food! That night we headed to the (somewhat) sketchy neighborhood of Shaw/U-street to Little Ethiopia. Ethiopian is a genre of food neither Stu nor I had tried. We didn't really know much about it but decided we'd be brave. I found a place called Habesha Market and Carry-Out. While we were walking there we passed a few fancy Ethiopian Restaurants and almost stopped in ... but we decided to go with our first choice. We walked in and realized (1) we were the only Americans there and (2) we had no idea how to pronounce or order any of the food. Luckily the waitress/cashier/store manager/busboy got really excited when I told her we had never had Ethiopian food before and insisted she pick our meal for us. We agreed, then realized we could have made a big mistake. But then a few short minutes later - THIS came out!
No worries, it was for sharing. Now imagine a piece of naan, or tortilla the size of a trash can lid. On top of it is spooned little heaps of stews and vegetables and sauces. Oh and did I mention there's no utensils? Anywhere in the restaurant? So you just rip off a piece of bread, pinch some stew into it (or sop up some sauce), and straight down the hatch! You can imagine it was really messy, but it was also super fun! And nothing like ambiance ... Al Jazeera was playing in the background.
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| First bite |
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| After a few bites |
