I think I'm more of an East Coast person. Well, at any rate, I love D.C. I think it's a combination of the feeling of being cold again (so refreshing), the fact that Tom and K live there, the old buildings, the nevergreens slicing into the sky, the birds circling endlessly as they are tugged by the desire to stay and the desire to go (I can totally relate), the parks, the little coffee shops and dive bars and Ben's Chili Bowl (Tagline: Bill Cosby's favourite. #awkward #thanksobama), the snowflakes softly flurrying to the sidewalk where they melt, instantly, Sina's spouting nonsense, the Supreme Court and Capitol Hill and all the monuments and memorials, the National Gallery with its van Gogh and Degas and Monet and Pollock and Cezanne, the Library of Congress and its civil rights and Magna Carta exhibit, the bagels and the breakfast biscuits and the pancakes, Georgetown, the reflection pool... So many things to love about D.C. that I can't even name them all.
A few thoughts:
1. Gloves and coats and hats are all great, but what about your knees? Mine were freezing. I miss Winter though. (When I got back to LA, it was pouring rain and it made me SO happy.)
2. Blisters are the most unfunny things ever. I bought some brogues just before I left and got blisters within minutes of putting them on. Said blisters plagued me all weekend. OWWW. (The brogues are gorgeous though, and they're mellowing, so no regrets.) Take home lesson: carry plasters with you always.
3. Fingerless gloves = so best.
4. Sorry, my mistake: the metro = so best.
5. I MISS South African accents. And South African friends. I saw Andrea at the airport - she was arriving and I was leaving - serendipitous happiness.
6. If you're in D.C. you have to go to Woodward Takeout Foodmarket (WTF) and get the WTF biscuit. Heaven.
8. Don't forget your umbrella.
9. Snowflakes falling are possibly the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
10. Everyone should visit Annapolis, the capital city of Maryland and home to gorgeous Edwardian/Victorian buildings, winding cobbled streets and the best crab cakes money can buy. And it's only 30 minutes or so out of D.C. Also I found a red hat. Ode to Annapolis to follow. Watch this space.
11. K is a walking machine. We walked 11 miles and took in all of Capitol Hill and the mall and also we didn't shut up once the whole time. AND she takes excellent photos.
12. I love the feeling of being in the center of the country, where it all happens. Supreme Court, White House (the Congress building wasn't looking its best).
13. I loved visiting the monuments and war memorials, but they made me wonder, really. There aree these war memorials, with the names of literally thousands of soldiers who died in combat, and yet the wars keep coming. And there are monuments erected to honour the ideas and actions of Lincoln and Jefferson and Martin Luther King, and yet...
14. No matter which country I'm in, art museums are my happy place. I was feeling particularly low on Monday afternoon, so I headed to the National Gallery in search of some impressionism to cheer me up. I lucked out. Fauvism, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism. Goodness, it was like Christmas.
I'm very happy that I'll be returning to D.C. in two weeks and that I'll get to spend NYE there. New York will just have to wait until next year.
Here are the things I did/saw/loved/noticed:
