This summer, I was given ONE summer Friday (i.e. a Friday in the summer when you don't have to work and it's treated like a holiday). I knew I wanted to travel given the long weekend, and when my husband and I couldn't agree on a place, I decided to visit friends in DC on my own. I moved out of the DC area about a year ago, and while I didn't expect to visit so soon after moving, I was very excited to see so many of my favorite people. I made sure to pack the weekend to see as many friends as I could!
Here are the top 10 highlights of the trip (in chronological order):
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| Here's my mommom with our peach cobbler dessert. She's 89! |
1. Dinner with my aunt and mommom
Despite my flight from SRQ being delayed by more than FOUR hours, I made it to DCA in one piece. My aunt and grandmother (whom I call "Mommom," because she thinks "Grandma" sounds old) picked me up at the airport, and we had a belated birthday dinner (two of us have April birthdays and the other is in June) at Ruthie's All Day. After all the stress of traveling, I was happy to relax with family over a drink and some real down-home cooking (think biscuits, mac-and-cheese, etc.).
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| This is me and Christine, my former OTF coach! |
2. Reliving my time in Bethesda
I spent my first morning in Bethesda, where I lived for more than 12 years. It's where I had my first (and only!) apartment and started my real "grown-up" life. It was fun walking along the streets where I had spent so much time, and I was happy to see how much was still the same. I met up with an old boss for breakfast at Maman, walked along the Capital Crescent Trail with a sorority sister, had more treats at Tatte with a friend from Moishe House, and ate a taco with my old Orangetheory coach at Fish Taco. After all that eating, I made sure to workout at OTF to end my day in Bethesda (a studio where I normally would exercise at 5am before work!).
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| Beth and I made it to Succotash just in time for happy hour! |
3. Friday night in downtown DC
I spent many Friday nights downtown meeting up with friends, and last Friday was no different! I met up with my friend Beth at the Hamilton for drinks and sushi, where we caught up about our jobs and the general state of the world ("doomsday" is what we called it). We continued the evening at Succotash, where we just made it in time for happy hour (theirs ends at 7pm) so we could have some milk punch and cornbread (more Southern food. Yum!). Beth is a friend whom I randomly met as we left the metro together and realized we were neighbors. I love that we are still friends to this day!
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| Kelley, Kay, and I all used to work at American University. Now we're onto new things! |
4. Reconnecting with friends in Clarendon
I stayed with a Theta sister in Clarendon for this trip, and I would go there every once in a while to meet Virginia friends. So that's what I did last Saturday morning. A colleague from American University (AU) and I grabbed acai bowls at South Block and chatted mostly about traveling (he's been around the world!), and then I met other AU colleagues at Northside Social, during which we mostly lamented about previous horrible jobs/bosses. Afterward, I met up with my hostess and her husband for brunch at Smokecraft. I don't eat pork or beef, but I did try the pulled chicken eggs benedict, and it was delicious! (I did not purposely eat Southern comfort food over this weekend, but it just happened!)
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| Could the day get any prettier?! I don't think so! |
5. Walking along the gardens near the National Mall
I metroed my way to DC after brunch (I have missed having such extensive public transportation!) and met up with a friend to visit the gardens behind the Smithsonian Castle and to go to the United States Botanic Garden. He works for the government, and I was happy to hear he still has a job, especially since he is rather new to the role. The displays at the botanical garden were not as impressive as they are at Christmastime, but we still got to see the corpse flower and other cool stuff. As we walked back toward the metro, it was neat seeing the Washington Monument in the distance and walking past all the other Smithsonian museums.
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| This is a smaller version of the entrance gate at Auschwitz. It means "Work makes you free." |
6. Visiting the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
In all the time I lived in the DC area, I never went to the Holocaust museum. I knew it would be depressing, and who wants to purposefully go out and do something that makes them sad? But I know how important this memorial is, and as a Jewish person, I felt it was my duty to go. Luckily another friend was down for it, so we spent about two hours in the museum. While we didn't read every word on all the signs, we made it through the majority of the museum. Much like my experience at Yad Vashem (the Holocaust museum in Israel; read that blog post here), I didn't feel overwhelmed with sadness or cry while seeing the exhibit. Everything is so overarching, and it feels less personal compared to reading a biography about a Holocaust survival (Rena's Promise, for example, is extremely moving and I cried multiple times while reading it.). But there were certain parts of the exhibit that hit me harder than others. There is a smaller replica of the sign at Auschwitz that you must walk under, which made you feel like you were entering the camp in a way (same with the cattle car you had to walk through, imagining how people were squished in those cars for days at a time with no food, water, bathrooms, etc. ). There was also a recreated image that portrayed how much hair would have been removed from those in the concentration camps (literal tons), and we read how the hair was used to stuff mattresses (can you imagine?!). But some of what I learned was more hopeful. Denmark were able to save all of their Jews by sending them via boat to Sweden; Bulgaria still sent its Jews to labor camps, but never exported them outside of the country, so they were spared as well.
The museum also contains a non-permanent exhibit about the Rohingya in Burma, a genocide I knew absolutely nothing about even though most of the information was from 2012-2017 (recent!). The Rohingya are a Muslim minority from Burma, and they have been refugees in Bangladesh to escape being killed in their home country. But they live in a state of limbo: neither Burma nor Bangladesh see them as citizens, and so they spend their days in slum-like camps, waiting for...what? I had never heard of this atrocity, and the fact that this is still an issue is terrible. No one is coming to help save these people, probably because they are poor and brown in a developing country, which makes the situation feel even more unfair and horrible.
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| Miriam and I had to snap a pic in front of the Chinatown arch. |
7. Laughing with my old roommate
Originally I was going to stay with my old roommate during this trip (she moved into my Bethesda apartment in March 2020, and we lived together for four years until she moved out and I left for Florida), but that fell through, so we met up for dinner one night instead. She had never been to China Chilcano before, one of José Andrés' restaurants, so we went there (I had been a few times and think it's very good, so I was happy to go again). The weather had been perfect all weekend, so we sat outside, mostly talking about her new boyfriend (I hope he's nice to her!). After dinner, we walked to Tipsy Scoop, a new ice cream shop that uses alcohol in its ice cream. Even though there were limited flavors, I thought the ones we tried were good, and I love the softer texture (since the ice cream can't freeze like it normally does). We were laughing so much that night, just making inside jokes and quoting Spongebob Squarepants. I miss her all the time, and I'm so glad she could visit me in Florida this past January. I hope she can come down next year, too!
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| Gregg admiring the Key Bridge from the Potomac River |
8. Exploring both the nature and urban sides of Georgetown
One of the things I knew I wanted to do during this visit was kayak along the Potomac River from the Georgetown Waterfront. My friend Gregg picked me up in Clarendon bright and early in the morning, but we realized the Keybridge Boathouse does not open until 9:00am on Sundays (a fact that is NOT stated on their website). So we did waste an hour just waiting, but once we were on the water, I was much happier. The weather was still perfect, and it was fun seeing heron, osprey, and mallards as we paddled.
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| The GPS told us to walk through Book Hill Park to reach Dumbarton Oaks. It's behind the library! |
After an hour, we walked up Wisconsin Avenue and hung out until Gregg left and my other friend Mike met me at Compass Coffee. We chatted for a bit before continuing our walk up to the Dumbarton Oaks Museum. I had been to the park behind the museum before, but never inside the building. There are artifacts from ancient Rome and Greece, as well as a substantial collection of pieces from South America from the time of the Incas. It's not too big of a museum, so we were probably there for less than an hour (the gardens didn't open until later, so we didn't get to do that). I was planning to have lunch in Georgetown, but plans changed, and I quickly bought some ice cream to-go from Thomas Sweet and caught an Uber up to Northeast DC for my next adventure.
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| Katy added a shade and rainbow/unicorn floaties to her stock pool! |
9. "Pool" party with my soul sister
I had been following my friend Katy's saga of creating her own backyard oasis with a stock pool (think of an extra-large water trough for horses). She found one for sale on Facebook Marketplace, rolled it down the street, and then took the next few days prepping the yard and the pool. I had no idea how much work went into it: I thought she'd just fill it with water and that would be that. But no! She sealed and caulked the tank, bought a filter, and even created a little deck around the perimeter of the pool. This was a full project, and she finished it in time for her husband's birthday party! So as soon as I arrived, Tommy Bahama rye in hand as a gift, I poured myself some rosé and hopped in the pool. It was so pleasant! Six of us could comfortably wade (or rather dunk) while enjoying our drinks and the sunshine. This pool was actually perfect, and if I still lived in the DC area, I told Katy I would come over every weekend to hang out in it. Thank goodness for TikTok in making these stock pools a thing!
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| I usually get the fish tacos at Chef Geoff's, but I decided to be healthy with the Andes bowl. So good! |
10. Enjoying a Women of Dartmouth dinner
For my last night in DC, I met up with some fellow Women of Dartmouth for dinner at Chef Geoff's West End. Two of them I had just seen recently at my reunion in July (and one was the friend I was staying with in Clarendon), but the other was a Dartmouth '90, so it was especially fun to catch up with her. When I lived in Bethesda, I would plan quarterly Women of Dartmouth dinners for members in the Bethesda/Silver Spring area, so it was fun to experience another one of those while I was in town. And the Andes bowl was probably some of the only vegetables I ate all weekend. Oops!
This was such a fun trip! Once I moved to Florida, I joked with my friends that they would have to come visit me because I was only going back to DC if one of them got married or died. But after this quick get-away weekend, I think I might take that back. I had a blast, and I could see going back every year to catch up with everyone!
