Sylvia's Journal

With the work done and the weekend ahead, we started our whirlwind tour of a few DC friends we hadn’t seen in a while.  We started on Q street with long time friends over a beef stew, a good glass of wine and catching up on at least five years of stories.

Saturday was reserved for culture. We visited the Saudi exhibit at the Sackler  a much more multicultural view on Saudi Arabia than we are used to.

Next stop was the Roosevelt Memorial park along the river. I didn’t even know it existed and we agreed with our hosts that it was inspiring and breathtakingly beautiful (apparently in any season).

I had insisted on seeing a rather unusual exhibit of objects that couldn’t been with the naked eye. My companions were humoring me and pleasantly surprised. The objects are created from microscopic materials and then painted using paint molecules and the split legs of dead flies. It was only through a powerful microscope that one could see the tailor of Gloucester, a parrot on an eyelash, a bird’s nest, a gilded motorcycle, a dinosaur, Beatrice Potter and more.  He even recreated the building of Lloyd’s of London on a pin’s head.

We then switched friends in another part of town – dinner and drinks and off to bed. Sunday morning was reserved for a visit to the zoo around the corner from their house. It was the first time in decades that I was there. Much had changed since our last visit. It is quite astonishing how much animals and large living spaces could be shoehorned into such a small piece of land. It was a pleasurable walk on a beautiful fall day, except for my crappy ankle which reminded me I need to get another cortisone shot.

Packed with ice around my ankle our friends delivered us to the last stop in Bethesda which included a Louisiana brunch with crayfish, crab cakes, beignets and a sauce called entouffee, washed down with chicoree coffee – a brunch that would see us through the rest of our day.

We took the metro to our last destination, National Airport, for our flight back to Boston where it was a few degrees colder and a little closer to winter. We agreed that DC was indeed a great place to visit, not just because of our friends but also the sheer number of interesting places and events that are going on all over town, free or otherwise.