Busy Weekend Settling In

Even though we got in last Thursday it took me a while to get caught up on my posts about the trip out here. You might think I don't know how to count days by looking at the dates on the posts.

Thursday night after unloading the car, we walked a couple of blocks to Toscana Grill for dinner. Great Italian food, but slow, slow service. While we appreciate the slow, relaxed atmospheres of some restaurants, this was way slower. At one point we thought our waiter had completely forgotten about us! We finished eating and sat for a good 15 minutes before he came by to ask if we wanted dessert.

We spent Friday evening and the weekend trying to settle in. Even though the apartment is furnished, we still needed to get things to make life easier. There isn't much closet or storage space so we wanted to get some things to make the best use of the space that we have.  I won't go into detail since that's not what I want to blog about, but it took up most of our weekend and we're mostly there.

Friday night we rode the Metro into DC and had dinner at Georgia Brown's. Not only was the food wonderful (I had the Jerked Chicken), but the restaurant just had such a nice relaxing feeling to it. I think part of it was the ceiling treatment. Since the lights were dimmed it was hard to tell what the "ribbons" were made of. At first I thought they were wood, but because of the way they curve and curl, I just didn't think they could be carved wood. Rich thought maybe they were copper. They made you feel as though you were sitting out under shade trees. From the website I find that they are "bronzed ceiling scrolls reminiscent of grand Oak trees outstretched like a lace border over Southern streets." And that's just the feel it had. The restaurant was packed and yet it didn't feel that way.

On Saturday we stopped for lunch at Café Asia. Not just "Chinese food," they feature cuisine from several different Asian countries. We ate outside on the patio and the weather couldn't have been nicer. Rich had sushi and I had Thai Chicken Basil. Since it's a very short walk, I'm hoping we'll eat there often enough that I can try a few dishes from some of the other countries.

We also took the Metro into DC and walked around a bit. Not anyplace in particular. I needed to learn how to read the metro maps and get a SmarTrip card and we figured since we were doing that we may as well go someplace and walk around a bit. We passed by The White House. Hopefully, we'll get to take a tour sometime.

We wandered into the Corcoran Gallery of Art. There was a very interesting exhibit by artist Elena Del Rivero. There were two works, but the one that I found most interesting was [Swi:t] Home: A Chant. Once again, no photography allowed, but you can read about it and see a picture of it by clicking the link on her name. On this page, the top two photos are of this work of art. It's nowhere near the same as being able to walk around it in person, but it'll give you an idea of the enormity of the project. The explanation of how it came about starts at the fourth paragraph. Walking around it and taking a look at all the pieces of paper and thinking about where they came from, who they belonged to, the time it took to sew it all together (not to mention coming up with the idea in the first place) made me realize that I could never be an artist. I'd have thrown all that "trash" away.

Saturday night while out shopping we walked over to the Hamlet Restaurant for dinner. Another great place to eat. While we've been eating at some really wonderful restaurants, we were happy to finally get out and do some grocery shopping so that we can start cooking. We probably won't be eating out quite as often now. You're probably getting tired of hearing "the food is great" anyway.