A day in DC

Well, semester number 1 has come to a close. After many stressful days and late nights, plenty of back massages and other kindnesses bestowed by husband (can we say learning to cook because otherwise we might not have eaten? doing laundry for us? making me hot chocolate at the end of my long day? I love this guy.), I turned in my last assignment on December 19th.

Alex and I scurried off to Montana to spend a wonderfully relaxing time with his family (in the snow!), and then came back to Virginia to spend a few days with my parents. Now I have two weeks until classes begin for the spring, and so we decided to spend a day touring the city that has been home for 5 months.

We started off the day at Ted's Bulletin, a hip version of a diner in eastern market. The waitress handed us our menus, which were basically newspapers with the food listed on the inside. They bring an entire carafe of coffee to your table (hallelujah!), and you can sub your toast for a homemade poptart...which I did.

(They salvaged a number of pieces from the Philadelphia Civic Center for their decor).

Following breakfast, we toured around the market at eastern market (and wished we were doing another supper club so we could use some of their fancy ingredients), and then made our way to...

-the Folger Shakespeare Library to see their exhibit on the King James' Bible

-The east wing of the National Gallery of Art to see contemporary art and french impressionist paintings

-Starbucks for some tea and a break to refresh ourselves

-The Phillips Collection in Dupont, where we saw the permanent collection, including works from Rothko, Kandinsky, Monet, Sean Scully and Joseph Marioni (which were some of my favorites).

 We had worked up an appetite, so we went to Founding Farmer's for dinner - a place I have been wanting to try since we moved here. It was super tasty - we each got a cocktail, and then started with bacon wrapped dates, stuffed with blue cheese --- they were so good that once the four were gone, I almost ordered a second plate. 

(me with my cucumber-gin tonic, alex with his manhattan, our plate of partially eaten dates which we could not wait long enough to sample before we snapped this photo)

The dinner was equally tasty, and we ordered chocolate mousse for dessert -- deciding to make it a celebration of the one semester of grad school successfully completed. Great end to a fun day in dc.