Washington DC Day 2

Happy Tuesday! I hope your week has been off to a good start. Today  I am posting my day 2 recap of DC, you can check out day one here if you missed it.

I woke up on Friday morning with the sides of my calves o so sore! It was a bad idea to wear flip-flops for a full day of walking, haha! So sneakers it was for Friday. Our day started with the whole reason for our trip to DC, which was the GWU info session and campus tour. Even though the building we were supposed to meet in was just a few minutes from the hotel, we ended up going the wrong way and getting confused, thus making it a way longer walk then was necessary.

But we did get there eventually. I love GWU! It is smack in the middle of the city and action and I can not wait to apply…..number one school? I think so!

After our tour was decided to head back to the hotel, have lunch and then venture down to the Capitol Building! But o how the looming clouds in the sky were waiting. We took the elusive Metro down to the Smithsonian and then would walk down to the Capitol. The metro was the only really “creepy” event we encountered. and I was glad to get off….quickly!

We walked down the mall taking pictures of the Smithsonian Institute and various museums; said an excited hello to the Capitol building in the distance!

(see the looming clouds…)

And then it started down pouring. So we ran into a random museum to take cover. I had no protection for my camera so we needed shelter…fast. The Museum became so crowed as people flooded in for cover. So we walked around inside waiting for the storm to pass.

But the rain wouldn’t stop. Luckily we found RAIN PANCHOS in the gift shop! HAHA! It was embarrassing but I could not stand in that museaum any longer. So we walked out in the pouring rain, our shoes became unbeleaveably socked and water-logged, but had to take cover again in an art gallery.

(some weird paintings…)

Finally the rain let up and we raced down to the Capitol, but the sky was still dark, gloomy, and ready to storm again. At least I got to see what I came for. It was beautiful and magnificent, even with a crazy gray sky!

Before we could finishing walking up the hill to the Supreme Court and Library of Congress and started pouring again and we had to take cover under a building over hang. We waited there for 15 minutes for the rain to let up again. We were so tired and hungry by that time we just had to find the metro and get back to the hotel. When we finally got back, tired, wet, hungry, and frustrated, we choose to clean up and go to Open City for dinner. We took a taxi this time to the restaurant….we had enough walking.

Open City was packed, and I had terrible eating-out anxiety and nerves. This was a real restaurant, not like Sweetgreen where I could see my food being prepared. However I had emailed the restaurant before our trip and was assured allergies were taken seriously and I could excpect safe food. When we finally got a seat I ended up sitting directly under a dripping ceiling vent….my hair was soaked by the time we left (I guess I just couldn’t get away from water that day!). I ordered the pan-seared salmon with fresh pinapple salsa, veggie quinoa, and a mixed green salad. The food was okay, nothing special, the salmon was the best part of the dish.

Overall I was not very impressed. But maybe I just have really have restaurant expectations. The server never checked on us and did not seem to know the menu and acted weird when I asked to change a side I choose originally (coconut rice….I changed to the quinoa. You can see some of the rice on the salmon in the above picture, haha!) But it was changed by the cooks very easily.

After dinner we stood on the street outside to flag down another cab and rode back to the hotel. We called it a day, exhausted and hoping to wake-up to a better last day in DC.

Day three’s recap will be up Friday! Have a good Fourth of July, celebrate our country with loved ones and enjoy your day and the rest of the week!