In case you missed it, here are the other two parts: Part 1 | Part 2
Sunday, Jan. 9: I'll spare you all the details, but I woke up on Sunday not feeling good at all. The thought of walking the Mall and going out to eat, etc., was too much for me. Plus, I have tons of pictures of all the D.C. monuments from my last trip when I went with my family in 1997. Instead, Michelle and I watched a bunch of movies and some tv, ordered in and made a good little day of it. I was back to feeling like myself by the end of the day.
Monday, Jan. 10: I'Luckily, my flight didn't leave until 4 p.m. and I was able to print my boarding pass online. That left just enough time to hit one more museum, grab lunch and then send me on my way to the Reagan airport via metro. I'd never been to the Portrait Gallery before, so that was our final stop of my trip!
I'm not a huge art fan, but I heard good things about this gallery. My favorite part was how each portrait had a plaque adjacent to the image, stating who the person of interest was and a brief biographical paragraph explaining the subject. Some of my favorites were the Presidential Hall, the 20th Century Americans and naturally, the sports wing. I'm a big modern history nut, and snapped a few pictures secretly with my phone :) The following is some of what I saw:
Signed Lance Armstrong portrait
The 60s rock concert poster art was seriously one of my favorites!
Reggie Jackson in an OAKLAND A'S jersey (can you tell who my favorite team is?)
Combined Hepburn sister Oscars
The beginning of the sports exhibit & museum's architecture
Remember how I fell in love with the Elvis displays at the Newseum the day before?! Well there was an entire hall of portraits dedicated to Elvis and the photographers who followed him around the year of his 21st birthday. He is a very attractive and interesting figure in Americana. I still want to learn more about Elvis and plan to someday pick up his biography!
Eventually we had to part ways, but I made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare. However, there were massive snow storms in Georgia and in the northeastern US states that day. As a result, Delta's hub in Atlanta was shut down for several hours and flights all over the country were affected by that. Luckily, my flight to NYC was only delayed about 45 minutes. However, once the plane was on the runway, we actually sat there for close to 30 minutes. I was nervous I'd miss my connection in NYC.
But when I did land in New York, I found out that flight was also delayed over an hour, leaving me plenty of time to explore and find some dinner. After eating out all weekend, I was not in the mood for any fast food. Instead, I found a cute little French bistro called Croque Madame and ordered up some chicken pesto with a salad and water bottle.
I ordered at the to go cart and decided I had enough time to sit down in the dining area. It was then I realized just how big the "restaurant" actually was. And the BEST part?! Instead of menus and waiters, you order from an iPad and it sends a message directly to the kitchen!!!
No joke, this was the most high-tech dining experience I've ever had! The food was amazing and I nestled myself into an individual, one-person dining pod, complete with European/US compatible outlets and of course, the iPad. It did cross my mind to play with the iPad, since each one came stocked with hundreds of apps, but my hygiene-obsessed mind got the best of me. Who knows how many people touch those each day, all of whom end up eating, touching money, food, their faces and possibly mouths. Not the most pleasant realization to have mid-dinner. Instead, I just enjoyed the idea from afar. I'm also not kidding when I say this restaurant literally has hundreds of tables, so imagine how much it must have cost to order that many iPads.
It was a really cool end to a frustrating day of travel! I finally made it home, in bed, sometime after 1 a.m.
In case you missed it, here's the recap from my first two days in D.C.: Part 1
Saturday, Jan. 8: When we came back from the bar on Friday night, Michelle told me it was starting to snow! The forecast predicted snow for about half of my trip and I was ecstatic to wake up to a very small dusting of snow and frost on Saturday morning. However, it didn't last long. In fact, it melted as soon as the sun came out pretty early in the day.
Michelle and I decided to go explore some more museums on Saturday, because we had big group plans for Sarah's birthday night. First up, in what turned out to be my only trip to the Mall the entire weekend, we headed out to the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum. I had memories of going there with my dad when I was 13, stopping at ever single exhibit, reading every single piece of information and watching movie after movie on aviation history and war aircrafts. Blahhhhh.
We had other plans! Michelle found out that the "guy who killed Pluto" (the planet of my youth, honest what good is the mnemonic "My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pies" mean without Pluto?!?!), was going to be talking at the Air & Space Museum that afternoon. Being the astronomy geek that I am, I didn't need to be told twice. Except, to our dismay, he was just signing books for two hours. How lame! And I was not about to spend what little money I had funding the guy who killed the dwarf planet!! We went exploring instead and pretty much stayed in the space portion of the museum.
You can't just cover up my childhood with a big black square!!
Next we were off the Newseum since Michelle picked up two for one admission on Groupon. I'd never been and if you know me, you know that I'm a big news/journalism geek. So onward. (Noticing a theme here?)
The museum was unlike anything I have ever seen. It was super poignant and emotional. We were actually starting at the top, sixth floor, looking at an overwhelming exhibit on Hurricane Katrina in the news and its aftermath, when I received a text about the shooting rampage in my own state... The irony was the exhibit was about how instantly we can access news now with the Internet and cell phones. I definitely teared up right there on the spot.
The entire museum was a mix of fascinating, terrifying, emotional and basically mind-blowing exhibits to me. I loved every second of it and would definitely go back again, or recommend anyone to go see it who hasn't yet!!!
Exhibit honoring Elvis' 75th birthday
Largest intact section of the Berlin Wall
Sports journalism exhibit
The media antenna from the collapsed World Trade Center and a three-story wall of front pages from newspapers around the world
After the surreal and somber experience of the Newseum, we headed back home after it closed -- spending close to three hours there. We got ready for Michelle's roommate's sister's birthday (Sarah, as I've mentioned before) and headed off toward an awesome restaurant in Georgetown called Thunder Burger & Bar. Touted as an edgy, rock & roll restaurant, I literally got the vibe that I was dining in Wonderland. Maybe this'll help shape your opinions on the matter...
I tried to get a good shot of the menu, but again, it was dark and edgy. The grass on the walls really made me feel like I was in a completely different world. I even joked to someone that when my beer came out, I half expected it to have a tag that said "Drink Me."
To boot, I was insanely excited about every song they played on the speakers. Bush, Killers, 30 Seconds to Mars, and more pretty good tracks I generally listen to every day. When it came time to decide, I made an absolute game-time decision and decided to go for the "Rock the Casbah" burger (House Made Falafel Burger, Topped With Diced Onions, Tomatoes & Herbed Cucumber Yogurt Sauce) over the "Learning to Fly Burger" (Herbed Ground Turkey Burger, Topped With Swiss Cheese, Avocado, & Granny Smith Apples). Neither it, not the seasoned fries, nor the winter citrus beer, disappointed.
I was pleasantly full and enjoying good conversation meeting new people as we went on to our next stop: Mr. Smith's of Georgetown. Another first for me -- I'd never been to a piano bar before! While crazy busy, Mr. Smith's had the beer of the month club for $3. Basically everyone in there was clutching $3 (decent) bottles of beer and singing raucously to the banging of the keys and the Irish-sounding singer. Unhappy with being squeezed into a small area in the back, I took initiative and scribbled down on a Post-It note that we were here with a birthday girl! And thus, the entire bar burst into the Birthday Song to Sarah. It was pretty entertaining. Later, I got him to play one of my fav songs, "Your Love" by the Outfield.
It was a really, really amazing experience (the crappy iPhone video does it zero justice). I'd totally go to a piano bar again, provided I was with a large group of people! And that's saying a lot, seeing as how again I did not have a single drop to drink at the bar. Ok, that's a lie, I tried a sip of the $3. That's how I made my informed opinion that it was decent beer ;) We eventually closed out the night in the back dining area, listening to a group of guys tell joke after joke after joke.
I am totally jealous of all the amazing things to do in D.C.!!! Stay tuned for the final recap in my next post.
Welcome to my second new thing of 2011! I promise I'll stop saying what number I'm on when I get further into this project :) So on to our second week of the new year. I went to school in Southern California (UC Santa Barbara). Most of my fellow alumni moved either into the LA region or out of state. I've visited a few of my Los Angeles friends on trips that coincided with work trips. If you didn't know, working in sports, I've basically had to work on the road and travel every two weeks since I graduated from college. It left me with plenty of opportunities to see old friends!
However, one of my old roommates, Michelle, moved to D.C. after college. We've been in frequent contact and I've said I wanted to go out there several times! In 2011, it finally happened. I visited my first friend from college on a non work-related trip! So here's a quick recap at my first time back in Washington D.C. in over 14 years (this will come in installments of three, I have waaaay too many pictures!):
Thursday, Jan. 6: After having to wake up at 4 a.m. in Arizona in order to make it to the Phoenix airport before my flight, Thursday wasn't too eventful. I hope you don't blame me for a lack of excitement that day, seeing as how I was way tired and passed out not long after dinner.
Friday, Jan. 7: Michelle worked in the morning and I went with her roommate on a chilllllllly 3.1 mile run past the zoo, etc. After warming up and showering, we grabbed some lunch and kicked off the sightseeing trip! First up, the Smithsonian National History Museum. I saw a lot of amazing things, beginning with the closest to my heart, Julia Child's kitchen!!!!
I also got my cheeseball moment in on the top floor, by Colbert's portrait :) I mean, neutral, ambiguously-aggressive face:
On that floor we also saw American Pop Culture pieces, like Dorothy's ruby red slippers and a Muppets exhibit!! It brought me back to my youth and made me smile :)
Along the way were some other really interesting exhibits on the nation's First Women, including pictures commemorating the Kennedy inauguration, first ladies' dresses and of course, Michelle Obama's stunning dress encased in glass. I wish I were that fabulous ;)
Afterward, we made our way back and got to check out some famous monuments in the sunset and twilight hours:
Since I'm not too ashamed to admit I'm such a giant nerd, we quickly ended our romp around the museum in order to make it to the night's events: wine tasting put on by the French Alliance and dinner for Michelle's roommate's sister's birthday weekend (did you follow?).
The wine tasting, while French, was fairly marginal. Since it was free, I assume they picked cheap wines. Hey, I'm not one to complain about anything free or French ;)
Former roommates at the wine tasting room!
For Sarah's birthday weekend dinner, we basically ran across the street and washed up wine tasting with margarita pitchers... classy ;) I don't want to sound like a brat, but being a California/Arizona girl, I'm mighty spoiled when it comes to Mexican food and margaritas. But these hit the spot and led to a wonderful time.
Half of our dining party of eight :)
Blurry... like my night. Ok, you caught me. I only had one. And I didn't even drink at the bar after!
In all, I had a wonderful trip (for a moment I forgot I was unemployed... ok maybe during the wine tasting and margarita madness, ha)! Michelle has a lot of really awesome friends and I opened up quickly, never once having a shy or awkward moment (another "new first" for Monique, ha!). I got to sample a lot of local D.C. culture (as in the bars and dining establishments enjoyed by other 20-somethings) and for real got my nerd on in all the museums. I loveeee American history/culture. I can't wait to share more with you tomorrow. I also can't believe I'm back in Arizona already... where it is close to 70° ;)
