Thursday 26 December 2013

Exploring the US Capital - Weekend in Washington DC

I finally found myself some time to write a blog post today.  Ever since we returned from our honeymoon, I've been busy studying for the PMP exam.  Luckily that's all over and I passed, so I'm now officially PMP certified!

2hung and I went on a trip to Washington DC back in September literally the weekend before the government shutdown, so we were able to visit the many Smithsonian museums and enjoy the city.  DC was a pretty fun weekend visit for us.  There were lots of places to see and lots of great restaurants.  The weather was quite nice so at first we set out on foot and thought we could just walk or take the transit everywhere, but soon we realized that the city was way too big and even getting from museum to museum was quite tiring, so we made use of their bike rental system called Capital Bikeshare.  It was quite convenient and wasn't very expensive.


We had our first meal at an izakaya called Daikaya.  The food was quite good.  We especially liked the abura-miso onigiri (red miso pork rice ball).  It was very tasty and I wanted another one, but we were quite full by the end.






The next day was memorials and monuments day.  First it was the White House, but we couldn't get very close to it because the president of India was visiting that day, so there was high security and we saw lots of SWAT teams driving around ensuring safety of the people they were transporting.

Unfortunately, the Washington Monument was under restoration, so there was scaffold surrounding it.


The Lincoln Memorial and the Reflection Pool were quite amazing.  Just like what we saw in the movies.


Then there were the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Korean War Memorial.  Lots of people came by to pay their respects.


For our first lunch in DC, we made a great discovery and came across a food truck fiesta in Farragut Square.  There were lines and lines of food trucks parked there at lunch time.  I decided to grab my lunch from the Pepe food truck by celebrity chef Jose Andres.  2hung grabbed some tacos from one of the other trucks.  There were so many choices!  My sandwich was very good and well worth the $12 I paid.




After our late lunch, we walked by the US Capitol.  It was huge - just like in the movies!  Then we went to visit the US Congress Library.  We made it there just before closing time.



Our second dinner was at a restaurant called Table.  We sat on the rooftop patio and it was the perfect evening for it.  The restaurant was quite nice and cozy.  Being so close to the ocean, of course we ordered plenty of seafood.  The food was very good as well.  I would definitely return.








The next day was museum day.  We started off the day with a hearty meal at GBD near Dupont Circle with some fried chicken and donuts...yum yum.  The fried chicken weren't the best that I've had but the donuts were not bad.








Then, it was off to the races to see how many museums we could see in one day.  First we stopped by the Smithsonian Information Center to get a map and to get oriented.


We went to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.





The National Air and Space Museum seems to be everyone's favourite because it was most crowded.



And lastly, the National History Museum to see the big diamond!  And of course, there were dinosaurs and lots of other things to see too, but there just wasn't enough time to see it all.




For dinner, we took the subway up to U Street and walked down to a place called Pearl Dive Oyster Palace for some oysters and good old crab cakes.  The oysters were very good.  They even had Belon which is a kind of oyster that I've had in Paris.  I want to go back for some more just thinking about it as I'm writing this post...






The next morning, we had time for a late brunch before heading to the mall and to the airport.  We went to B Too which is a belgian restaurant.  We had great Belgian waffles and 2hung had a squid ink omelette which was looked very unusual but was delicious.







Daikaya on Urbanspoon Pepe Food Truck on Urbanspoon Table on Urbanspoon GBD Fried Chicken and Doughnuts on Urbanspoon Pearl Dive Oyster Palace on Urbanspoon B Too on Urbanspoon

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