another weekend in d.c.

so the husband had to be in d.c. for work last weekend. since it was over my birthday, i decided to tag along for fun!

we stayed at the embassy suites on 22nd. it's an ok hotel-- more for the business traveller than for a leisure tourist. we had some issues with our toilet and the remote controls for the tv don't work very well. you have to pay (thru the nose) for Internet service in the room and the in-house gym was (i swear to god) 80 degrees when i went in to work out. it's clean tho and there is free breakfast plus drinks in the evening. so while it might not be my first choice, it works for a moderate hotel.

for my birthday, the husband surprised me tickets to see the washington capitals play on saturday night against the phoenix coyotes. we had awesome seats, and i had a really great time. especially since the caps won 4 - 2!

as far as sight seeing this time around, while the husband was off to work during the day i wandered over to georgetown to look around. i love taking a book to the park behind the old stone house and reading in nice weather, and this weekend was pretty lovely as far as winter weather in d.c. goes. georgetown is mostly shopping and eating. i really didn't do much in way of shopping as i can't really afford the higher end stuff which is what you'll find here. i did peek in a couple of antique shops. again looking at things i couldn't afford, but i do love old furniture and artwork.

for dinner, we did try martin's tavern one night. this a small bar/restaurant on wisconsin ave. that serves typical pub food in a quaint atmosphere. it's claim to fame is that it's been around for over 75 years and has served every president since truman. supposedly jfk proposed to jackie o. in one of the booths there as well. dinner was pretty good. i had the shepard's pie and the husband had the chicken parmesan. both tasted pretty good and the price wasn't terrible for d.c. dining.

on the husband's day off, we headed to the national geographic museum to see the terra cotta warriors exhibit from china. that was really neat. they have about a dozen or so of the (possibly) 7,000 warriors on view. i learned some interesting information and really enjoyed seeing the exhibit. afterwards we headed over the national archives since neither of us had ever been. we really only visited the rotunda, but again, we enjoyed the exhibit. i had no idea that the u.s. had an original copy of england's magna carta. it was really interesting to read some of the information regarding the declaration of independence and the constitution, as well. the great thing about visiting on a tuesday afternoon in january too was that there were very few people in the archives, so we could really take our time visiting. after that, we still had some time to kill before heading back to the hotel, so we headed over to the national museum of the american indian which i had been asking to visit for a few months. honestly, i was a little disappointed with the american indian museum though. the layout of exhibits is somewhat confused and odd. also while they have an large collection of artifacts from different eras and areas, the artifacts are often poorly labeled and lumped together with too many items. in the one area i was probably most interested in, one that showcased carvings and arts from various tribes and times, everything (and i mean everything) is placed in a huge glass showcase and they have two flip books on either side of the case where you can look up the artifacts to see when and where they came from. that's just far too difficult. you spend so much time trying to figure out which artifact is which and it's really just frustrating. it's unfortunate that a museum that has such interesting stories to tell doesn't have them displayed in a more accessible manner.

now my favorite part of this trip were my birthday dinner and post-birthday lunch, both at restaurants by top chef contestants! for dinner, we went to art and soul, owned by top chef masters contestant art smith and for lunch the following day, we drove to frederick, md to eat at volt run by this season's top chef runner up, bryan. i'll post reviews about both in the next post!