We had some time to kill that afternoon, so we walked across the Francis Scott Key bridge and headed into Georgetown to wander. I had only been in Georgetown once, ten years ago on a college trip, and at night, so I really didn’t remember much of it at all. It’s as nice as everybody thinks:

For dinner, we got together with Mo, his girlfriend Devi (whom I met for the first time), her roommate, and another acquaintance for some delicious Mexican food at a nearby restaurant. Since we had traveled all day after waking up around 5 AM, we were pretty beat and called it a night.

Saturday morning Julia and I headed into “The District”, with the first stop at the Holocaust Museum, which neither of us had ever visited before. It’s hard to put into words the impact of seeing that museum, as anybody who has ever visited can attest to. It was not just the exhibits in the museum that were stunning, however. Sadly, some woman chose to wave her terrible ignorance around like a banner when she commented that President Obama’s “takeover” of power in this country was exactly like what Hitler did in Germany; a rather low-class outburst for something like the Holocaust Museum, all things considered.

After the museum, we walked around a bit on the National Mall, which is in such terrible shape that it ought to embarrass every single American: dirty, trashed, patches of lifelessness, it’s a shame. The National Mall, with its great monuments and location as the center of government, is arguably the most important public space in the country, and it deserves to look as such. As bad as the Mall was, though, it could not take away from what was on it:

Since I had last been in Washington, the WWII Memorial had been completed, so it was nice to see that:

From the Mall, we went to Adams Morgan, a neighborhood I had never heard of that is supposed to be “hip”, and “with it” and all the other things kids are these days. Living up to the hype, it certainly was all of that and more, with an art fair and a breakdancing competition:

Leaving Adams Morgan, we went out for dinner with Julia’s uncle, who lives near Logan Circle, a neighborhood that is up-and-coming. True to form, it has a very nice Italian restaurant where we at dinner, as well as a chocolate shop where we got dessert before heading back.

And then, Sunday, our day of return. We went out for brunch with Mo and Devi, then started the drive back to Philly with the rest of the weekend commuters, sports fans, and itinerant travelers. Traffic wasn’t too terrible once we got outside the Beltway, and we made it in plenty of time to the Philadelphia airport to catch our flight home (this time, no delays or cancellations or similar fun). Finally, around 10 PM, we bid our cab driver goodbye and entered our apartment to find it in one piece, yet still trashed by our two cats. Our vacation was sadly at an end.

• Current Mood: Hungry
• Currently Listening To: "On The Run", Pink Floyd

Thursday was the day for stereotypical New York touristy things. First, we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge to Brooklyn and back, stopping at Brooklyn Bridge Park for a bit:

We then hopped on the Staten Island Ferry for a ride to the island and back. It was a pretty windy and cold day, so standing on the deck to see the views wasn’t all that enjoyable, but I did it anyway:

Chelsea was a neighborhood we hadn’t spent too much time in up to that point, so we walked around there for a bit, stopping (of course) at Chelsea Hotel, as well as a burger place for lunch. We moved north to Columbus Circle and got some chocolate at the Godiva store before heading back to the hotel to freshen up a bit. For dinner, we went to a very lovely seafood place in the Village, then to the Brass Monkey bar in the meatpacking district. We didn’t stay too late, however, as we had to be up early on Friday.

Early Friday morning (5 AM early, to be exact), we got up so we could check out and be to Penn Station for our 7:10 train to lovely Wilmington, Delaware. It was a lot easier than I expected to grab a cab in Chinatown at 6 AM, and before long we were heading out of New York through the industrial landscape that is New Jersey. Just a couple hours later we were in Delaware, where Mo picked us up on his way to DC. Traffic wasn’t too terrible midday on Friday, and by around 1 P.M. we were in DC ready for the last part of our trip…which you can read about tomorrow.

It was pretty late when we arrived, so we didn’t go out on the town, but instead wandered around Chinatown and Little Italy and grabbed a late dinner at an Italian restaurant before heading back to the hotel and turning in for the night.

The next day, Monday, we started off by taking a trip down to City Hall park, and then Battery Park to see the sights, such as the Woolworth Building:

From there we headed uptown, first to Bryant Park to relax for a bit, then to check a bit of the shopping on Fifth Avenue. When we got tired of seeing things we couldn’t afford, we paid a visit to the Rockefeller Center, where the line to get to the top is far shorter than the Empire State Building, and the view is nicer:

Sadly, we couldn’t go to the 70th floor of the Rockefeller Center, the very top, as it was taken over by a film crew shooting a movie starring Matt Damon and involving a motorcycle somehow. We did, however, choose to take the historical art tour of the Rockefeller Center, and as Julia and I were the only people on the tour, it was a very personal experience. We also learned that most tourists are pretty ignorant: our tour guide said that we were the first people to have any idea who Diego Rivera was. Pathetic.

Afterwards, we headed to Williamsburg to meet Julia’s friend Quinn who is living in Brooklyn. We jumped on the L and went under the East River to grab dinner at your typical hipster restaurant, which did have pretty good food I do have to admit. And that was it for Monday.

Tuesday morning we started out at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We spent the entire morning there, and saw maybe about a quarter of it, and much less of that in any detail. It’s a place you can spend a week at no problem. I’ve been there twice now, and there are still huge collections I have never seen.

We were temporarily stymied by a gyro mishap, but soon we disappeared behind the Met to check out Central Park. We wandered around for a few hours, and saw the typical touristy things like the Bow Bridge and Strawberry Fields. We exited the other end of the park onto the Upper West Side, where Julia got a manicure and we stopped and ate cupcakes from Crumbs.

Tuesday night, we hopped around SoHo, going to McSorley’s because it’s old (where we found a tiny bar kitten that looked a lot like Sasha), then to a couple more bars until we ended up at the Blind Tiger in Greenwich Village, which had more than one recommendation from people I know. They were right, and it was an excellent place.

All of that barhopping, which we are entirely too old for, wore us out, so we headed back to the hotel and went to sleep so we could shop on Wednesday, which will be in the next installment. Stay tuned!

• Current Mood: Monday headache
• Currently Listening To: "New York State of Mind", Billy Joel

We arrived in Philly around 9 P.M. their time, and my good friend Mo picked us up at the airport and whisked us off to a tea place in University City for red bean bubble tea (the best flavor) and some calamari. After a long day of traveling, though, we were pretty tired so it was off to bed for us.

The next day, Saturday, was our day in the city of Philadelphia. We took the train into town (awesome mass transit! Even on weekends!) and walked around a bit, first stopping at their famous city hall:

Then off to famous Love Park:

We went off to Chinatown, where they were in the middle of their Autumn Festival. Perfect timing for us!

While we were in Chinatown we decided to stop for lunch. We ended up at a restaurant serving Dim Sum, which neither Julia nor I had had before. There was a wide variety of food, much of which we had never seen before, and a huge amount of it. It wasn’t long before we were both stuffed.

After lunch, we walked around Penn’s Landing and the Old City and saw many of the historical sites around Philadelphia (including a very interesting archaeological dig). Unfortunately, we couldn’t enter most of the sites because they had filled their quota of tickets for the day, but we could see the outside of places like Independence Hall and the First Bank of the United States:

After that, we made a pit stop at a Foot Locker so Julia could buy more comfortable shoes, and then took the subway to University City again to have a drink at a very forgettable bar. Later, we had dinner at a tapas place in Old City just as the rain began to fall, then beat again, took the train back to Lansdale and called it a night.

Sunday we got up and went to a sports bar to watch the Vikings play the 49ers. We watched most of the game, but had to leave before it finished (and thus missed the amazing ending) to take a train into Philadelphia so we could catch the Bolt Bus to New York. The Bolt Bus is awesome: clean, comfortable, and equipped with free wifi (which I used to immediately watch that final pass in the Vikings game). All this for $13 for a trip from Philly to New York. A couple hours later we were deposited right outside Penn Station, ready to check in to our hotel in New York and start exploring.

Stay tuned for more!

• Current Mood: Relaxed

Back in October!

• Current Mood: Excited

Garden of the Gods Park in Colorado Springs:

Another shot of Garden of the Gods Park:

Flowers on the Pearl Street Mall in Boulder:

The winding road up Lookout Mountain:

The view from our hotel:

Julia’s father and nephew playing on the swings:

• Current Mood: Peckish

I was only there for a few days, but I found a number of amusing and confusing things while I was there (and not just the airport that is almost as large as the city of Minneapolis, and located almost as far from Denver)…

• I-70 heading west out of Denver into the mountains is surprisingly wide. Why such a huge freeway? Seems out of place.
• Many times on the freeways I’d see people traveling around 45 MPH for no apparent reason. It wasn’t the terrain, since this was in the flat areas. Not being Minnesota, though, they were not in the left lane.
• Peña Boulevard, the freeway to the airport, allows bicycles on the shoulder. I didn’t see any, but bikes? On a freeway? That sounds more dangerous than the bike lanes on Hennepin in downtown Minneapolis.
• The Chevy Cobalt is a crappy car, but it become a bit less crappy once you figure out how to move the seat back from its default recline position.
• Suburbs look the exact same no matter where you go.
• Hotels are much cooler when they come with a semi-tame fox that lurks in the parking lot at night.
• States that allow grocery stores to only sell 3.2 beer should have large signs next to said beer informing people of this fact. Breweries that make 3.2 versions of decent beers should be mocked.

I took about 500 pictures while I was there, so processing them will take some time. I’ll have them up as soon as I can.

• Current Mood: Headache

Once I get back, I’ll have a ton of pictures to post.

• Current Mood: Rocky Mountain High
• Currently Reading: "A People's History of the United States", Howard Zinn