Saturday morning in D.C. is far different from the workweek. Fewer people in the early morning and a larger number of homeless and beggars in the afternoon. First thing Saturday morning was breakfast with the business manager of Matt's new boss. We ate at Old Ebbit Grill. Apparently it used to be the oldest saloon in D.C. but I don't know about that - I ordered corned beef hash. I figured, when it Rome... It was okay. Meeting with the manager was also okay. It was very interesting to hear his thoughts on the business side of the future of Matt's chosen profession. Enough of that.
After breakfast, we all went our separate ways - Matt back to the conference, the manager to the subway, and me to the mall. Well, mallS. I went to the National Mall first to see if I could get tickets to the Washington Monument for that day. I did, by the way. Then, I made a stop into the Smithsonian Castle to see the sights and gardens. The gardens were slightly marred by all the boy scouts, but I guess that couldn't be helped. It was a Saturday, after all.
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| The Smithsonian Castle. |
After seeing the castle and grounds, I went to the National Museum of the American Indian. It was very well done. I wish I had had time to explore more of it. It was early and all the other tourists were are the Air and Space museum so I was one of only about a dozen people in the place. After exploring for about an hour, I walked back to meet Matt in Chinatown for some real Chinese food as an early lunch. Look how neat! This is the entrance to Chinatown. All of the businesses have to have their names written in Chinese characters, as well as English. I wonder how many of them are correct. We didn't eat Chinese because the place we were headed to was closed, but we did stumble on a Vietnamese place that Matt talked me into. I'm not a huge fan, but he is a sucker for banh mi. The food was fine, but I didn't love it.
Know what I do love? Ice cream. After I walked Matt back out to his conference, I went window shopping and stumbled across a Milk Bar. Lemme tell you about it. Milk Bar does interesting things with dairy. This is soft serve ice cream that tastes like the milk in the bottom of the bowl after you eat all the frosted flakes. I may have eaten ice cream while walking through 40 degree weather. It was so worth the frozen mouth that I got from it.
I also bought a compost cookie (chocolate, pretzels, potato chips, and other stuff that works perfectly with the salty-sweet scheme), birthday cake truffles, and a slice of crack pie (think butter. glorious butter). I only ate the ice cream that day. I swear.
After indulging in chewable milk and not buying anything while shopping, I met Matt to go to the top of the Washington monument. We waited a long time, took a super small elevator to the top, and then rode the elevator back down. While at the top, we looked out the windows. Here, if you look out the window between us you can see the White House.
After the monument, we got gussied up again and went to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. The museum was closed to the public, but open by invitation only from another one of those big pharm companies. Oh. My. Goodness. Where the dinosaur museum let me down, this one far exceeded my expectations. The party was catered by someone who knows how to cater.
I won't do it justice by describing it, so I won't. Until I get to the end. We had free reign to go wherever we wanted. We got there early so there weren't many people, but even when there were a lot of people, it wasn't that many. It didn't take away from the experience at all.
Dessert was spectacular. There were a bunch of little stations with different desserts. One station had sweet shooters of cheesecake and banana pudding. Another had artisan ice cream frozen with liquid nitrogen. Another had cake. Glorious cake. I could have stayed there all night. But we didn't. We had to leave to get to a second dinner with the dermopath from the night before. This one was outside of DC and we were two of five guests. It took forever to get there, the food was weird, but the company was great. We also got in the wrong Uber at 11:00 at night, but that's a story that I'm just not emotionally prepared to tell.
By the time we got safely back to the hotel, it was Sunday and the day before we got to go home. I mean, we had to leave.
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