I haven’t made a photo post since Amsterdam back in May. There are a few reasons for this. The first is that I hit sort of a hiccup in my photography after time at work really ramped up, I opted out of travel for a few months and realized that I had taken one hundred thousand photos from January to May and was tired of editing. I still carry my camera and lenses with me daily but was rushing home to write, read or relax instead of taking detours for the sake of taking a photo. I’ve ramped back up lately and have posted a few more miscellaneous photos as well as planned some trips for Fall and Winter. I’m also debating some camera gear changes soon as I’m just not happy with the Micro Four Thirds setup after using it exhaustively for half a year. I’ll save that for another post.
Elizabeth and I headed to DC last week and the scope was to attend a wedding but, it was cancelled and we had plane tickets and a Friday off work so decided to enjoy DC, meet some of her friends (and Mom) and play tourist. The flight from Boston to DC is only 1 hour and the drive to Boston was 2 so it wasn’t too bad of a trip for Friday through Sunday.
We stayed at the beautiful Hay-Adams hotel facing The White House and their service was incredible! My only complaint is that we stood out quite a bit. The room we stayed in was $1400 a night but I paid under $400 via my membership with FoundersCard. The hotel was absolutely wonderful but the other guests who wore mostly suits and were much older than us gave us very weird looks each time we walked through the lobby. The concierge acted as if getting from the airport to the hotel via the subway (DC Metro) was absurd and opted for a town car instead which we declined. It was a great hotel but maybe I should buy a blazer or something so I don’t stand out so much if I stay there again. Also, FoundersCard needs to add a few more economy hotels in DC area (under $300).
We dined at Proof restaurant which is across from the National Portrait Gallery. Proof is known as a wine bar but their dinner menu was exquisite. I believe Elizabeth had this:
Roasted Scottish Salmon caramelized cauliflower, filet beans, mushrooms, potatoes, fennel cream
I had this:
Vadouvan Spiced Wild Alaskan Halibut fragrant jasmine rice, sauteed greens, coconut-curry leaf emulsion
Both dishes were very impressive. They had a Maple Beer from Oregon and Eizabeth had a glass of Reisling. For starters, it was mixed olives and prosciutto on buttery toast. It was so much warmer in DC that we dined outside in sleeveless shirts despite most of the locals wearing full sweaters. Compared to home, DC was very warm.
Later in the evening, we met up with the previously “Bride-to-Be” and 8 others for drinks at the DC Speakeasy Gibson. Getting this bar was a challenge because I didn’t make a reservation until the day before and they couldn’t accommodate 11 people but we ended up getting a private room with a promise to meet a bar minimum and we just barely passed it. 11 People for 2 hours ended up costing us $550 which we all split evenly and it was fantastic! Brendan was our mixologist and took care to explain to us various types of distilling processes, how gin & vodka are made and the ingredients to each drink. Of course the service was slow because that’s the nature of this and making 11 drinks to bring out all at once is no easy process. I’d love to visit here again with a slightly smaller group but the drinks and service were high quality.
Following Gibson, it was a group consensus that we head someplace cheaper and the remainder of our evening was spent dancing to Bon Jovi songs and drinking Yuengling ( a beer you can’t get north of DC or west or the Mississippi) and was a favorite of mine while living in Florida.
The remainder of our time was spent playing tourist and touring Washington with Elizabeth. It was rainy, overcast and made photography a challenge but I was able to shoot off a few quality pictures that I’m happy with. Saturday evening was spent with Elizabeth’s mom in DC. We had dinner, drinks and chatted and then I thoroughly enjoyed sleeping in Sunday and heading back to New Hampshire. Aside from the flat tire on Sunday afternoon, everything else about the trip was fantastic! I’m also surprised I spent as little money as I did. It was a cheap, fun and enjoyable trip. Looking forward to going back.
Thanks in a huge way to KT at Gibson, the concierge at Hay-Adams who helped me out with restaurant bookings and tours and to Elizabeth who is from the area so was crucial in helping me not get lost. Now, let’s check out some pictures!
That’s it. Thanks for checking out the new set of photos. The entire set (just under 100 photos out of 1,000 taken) is over on Flickr.