A continuation from the previous post…
Other than being the murder capital of the country, I guess the District of Columbia is also known for its federal government buildings and assortment of historical monuments. Beyond Sui’s optometry conference, we didn’t have much of an itinerary.
Which meant we spent most of our time hanging out around the National Mall.
As with any metropolitan area, living outside of the main tourist area saves a bundle on hotel fare; we stayed at inoffensive Crystal City, a mere twenty Metro minutes away from central D.C. but otherwise an artificial piece of overgrown shopping morass. Sui did her research here, and made sure we slept far away from the murder.
We hit the Smithsonian museums almost daily. Free admission meant that all the interesting ones (e.g., the Air & Space, the Museum of Natural History) were teeming with tourists and while well-maintained looked pretty much like every other museum in any major city. They did make for convenient air conditioning pit stops, though, and some even served good food (in particular, the American Indian museum’s cafe).
The Mall’s main attractions – the Washington Monument, WWII Memorial, other wars’ memorials, the Lincoln + Jefferson Memorials, the White House and the Capitol – were obviously more unique to D.C., and I suppose are as impressive as giant limestone tributes could be. I did notice the monuments and even the Capitol and Library of Congress drew importance rooted from American history, which, depending on your perspective, is inspirational or pitifully brief in duration.
Grub-wise, we tried Teaism (interesting Japanese bento boxes and fancy teas), the aforementioned American Indian museum’s cafe, the cafe at the National Gallery of Art, decent Pakistani and Italian restaurants at Crystal City, and Sui’s favorite, a out-of-the-way Fish Market four blocks away from the Mall. That last one was good enough for a second visit, though in hindsight, beyond the fresh (1) seafood, all the market offered were various ways to fry said seafood into an unrecognizable mess of batter.
Oh, and Virgin America’s a pretty cool airline. I still need to find which online stations they hooked up to provide separate channels for Cantonese, Mandarin, and Japanese Pop; they sure know how to cater to their insignificant Asian audience.
- read: need a kitchen to cook (↩)