Visitors Galore

When people come to visit, they come to stay…with us. One roommate had a friend in town for a conference for a whole week leading up to Easter. Mel's buddy Trey, whom I bonded with over a DC United game last summer, came into town on Thursday and was staying through Monday. The house was full! Plus, Michelle and her fam, and Troy and his g-ma were coming in from AZ for a weekend of Easter festivities (they weren't staying with us!) With lots of people comes lots of good times! (Please note that there is a Trey and a Troy in this story so try to keep up.)

After Mel and Trey got back from dinner on Thursday, someone had the bright idea of walking the monuments at night, in the cold and the wind. So we (Mel, Trey, Tara, and I) bundled up and took the metro to the Smithsonian stop and walked the rest of the way. It was actually pretty awesome and I'd never seen the monuments at night. We walked all the way to the Lincoln singing patriotic songs because we're cool and we can. We talked about maybe one day streaking through a national monument area, but most of the time we're all talk and no action.

Torrey had organized a dinner Friday evening for Michelle, Troy, Karen (the g-ma), and me at this steak place which was featured in the Devil Wear's Prada. It took several brainstorms to settle on this place as our dinner local. Torrey wanted to take us all to a Mexican restaurant. Now I'm sure there are Mexicans living in DC making good Mexican food, but you don't come from Arizona to DC for the Mexican food. That's just dumb! It's as if I was going to North Dakota for the lobster. You just don't do that. So we finally all agreed on this place. I had the prime rib, and it was excellent! We wined and dined and eventually strolled back to the Mayflower hotel where Michelle and Troy were staying. For anyone keeping track, that's the hotel where NY Gov. Spitzer had his rendevouzs that got him in a lot of trouble. Torrey broke off and headed to Dupont. The rest of us just hung out in the hotel bar for awhile shooting the breeze. I eventually left and closed the books on another fine Friday in our great nation.

But I opened the books on a new and superb Saturday. Mel and Trey wanted to go to Annapolis and invited all the roomies to come along. All the roommates wanted to go, but indecisiveness and homework widdled them away leaving the three of us bound for a mini road trip to Maryland.

Our first stop was the state capitol building. It was pretty old and pretty awesome. There's a George Washington life size figurine that apparently spoke at one time, but GW was mute on our visit. But that didn't stop me from getting my pic with our first president. From the state capitol, we ventured on over to the Naval Academy, but we stopped into a little art shop en route. They had the coolest set painting ever. One was a picture of Republican presidents (Abe, Teddy, GWB, GWHB, the Gipper, etc) sitting around playing poker. The other was the same of Democrat presidents (Bill, JFK, FDR, Jackson, Carter, maybe LBJ). Melanie and I were both serious about purchasing them, but they were kind of pricy. We told the shop owner that we were in town for the day and might stop back in on our way through town. If I didn't have so many opera's looming in the future, I might've purchased the painting...maybe even the set. I guess that's the true bipartisan in me. :)

So the Naval Academy was cool. We went into the campus cathedral and it was pretty awesome. The view of the harbor was phenomenal, especially with all the sail boats out and about on the overcast day. We strolled up one of the streets and stopped off to get some icecream and then headed up to this famous historical house that is known for it's huge garden. It was big. And there was a stream that flowed through it. It would be cool to have an evening party there. We headed back down towards the harbor and popped into a restaurant for a late lunch. After lunch we headed back to the car and drove home to the district. We watched Music and Lyrics, probably one of the greatest movies ever! and then headed to bed. Not bad for a spur of the moment road trip!