Visitor from the UK!

A few, well, several weeks ago, one of my dearest friends Emily visited from England!  She did a bit of a US Tour - DC first, then visited a friend in New Orleans finishing with a few days at home in Maine.

The first day she was here, we decided to do some shopping!  We headed straight to the outlets - she needed to stock up at Ann Taylor and Banana.  That evening we went into Clarendon and met H for dinner at Ray's the Steaks.  What a fantastic restaurant.  We don't go there enough, but Emily's request for red meat was a great excuse.  The wine list is great and the food always delicious!  

The next day was our 'Tourist Tour of DC' day, and luckily it was the most beautiful day of the week.  With a huge list of places to go, we got up and out early around 1130am.  We drove to Vienna and hopped on the metro.  Our first stop was Rosslyn and Iwo Jima (1). 

I had never been up to the monument myself, so it was neat to see it finally.  It's enormous!  And really powerful.

From there we walked down and across the Key Bridge through Georgetown (2).  The Georgetown French Market (3) was going on that afternoon up Wisconsin Ave, so we wondered around that for a while.  This is the second time I've been to the market - the first time it was really underwhelming.  This year was definitely better, but still not as big as they advertise.  

On the way back down the hill we stopped at the Marvelous Market (4) for a quick sandwich.  Sitting outside on the picnic bench was a great break!  After the pit stop we headed on down Wisconsin and continued through Georgetown to about the end, and jumped in a cab.  We got out right around 17 and Constitution to continue our walking tour.  We headed down 17th and stopped to admire the WWII monument, Lincoln and Washington Monuments (5).  

We continued on and explored the new MLK monument (6).  This is a huge space, and really at an interesting spot among the original collection of monuments.

Continuing on around the Tidal Basin, we wondered through the FDR Memorial (7).  I'd walked through a few times, but never really took the time to read the quotes and explore the area.  It's really one of my new favorites.

As we made our way over to Jefferson, we had a slight run in with a squirrel (8) and almost went for a swim.  Since the Tidal Basin is 10' deep, it's a really good thing we weren't one foot closer to the edge or the day could have taken an extreme turn! 

We dodged waves of school groups as we took in Emily's favorite spot in DC (9).  We decided that the steps of Jefferson were a great place to take another pit stop and sat down for a good long while.  It was so nice to soak up the scenery and just chat.

Once we left the Jefferson, we walked on around the Washington Monument, crossed 14th Street (10) and up the mall towards the Capitol.  

This is when we got the phone call from my softball coach asking if I'd happened to bring my catchers mitt with me that day...while I normally carry it everywhere I go....not this day.  We would have to forego pinch hitting for the team and just see them at the after-party.

This is also when we apparently decided we'd done enough photo taking for the day...

We walked about halfway up and then back, on our way to stop 11 - a beer at Old Ebbitt Grill - and oh man how good did that Sam Summer taste!

Stop 12 was dinner at Siroc.  One of my favorite restaurants in DC, I couldn't resist taking Emily there!

And finally, we ended our day with stop 13 at The Exchange to meet up with the Elon CAN Softball team.  Emily enjoyed seeing some old Elon friends and we had a great night dancing and hanging out with the team!

Saturday's weather was gross, so we decided to skip our day in Old Town and stick around close to home.  Lunch at Coastal Flats, the Fairfax Corner art show, dinner at Los Toltecos and beers at Dogfish - a great low key day!  

I can't even tell you how great it was to have Emily visit for a few days.  After my trip to England last spring and meeting she and her husband in Barcelona in October, I'm loving all of our visits and (significantly) increased email exchanges.  It makes London seem not quite as far away!  I can't wait to see them on our final stop during our European trip this coming fall :)

Parents visit!

This weekend, my parents came up from Richmond to visit. It's always fun when they come to town with their adorable dog Pearl.  My mom's birthday is this week, so it was a great excuse to have them to town.  We had a pretty quiet weekend but took them to some of our favorite places.

They came up Friday afternoon.  Mom and I ducked out and went to Home Goods and World Market, looking for nothing but finding a few fun things like pretty cocktail napkins, cute wrapping paper for my upcoming bridal and baby showers, and a little plastic basket to put under my sink for my sponges.  I know it sounds trivial but sometimes it's the small things that make the biggest difference!  A couple of those little sticky things and voila! no more yucky sponges on the counter.  Friday evening was fairly low key, which was perfect.  We went just down the road to Falls Church and Mad Fox Brewing.  We were able to watch the Carolina and VCU basketball games, have some good beer and food.  Dad loved the mussels and spinach salad.  Mom and I got pizzas - she had the fig and balsamic blue cheese and I got the cabonara with prosciutto, caramelized onions, mozzarella with a cracked egg.  Both were wonderful, and made for great leftovers!  Husband had the frickles (fried pickles) and the frickle burger, the special for the day.  It was a great evening!

Saturday was a lazy day.  Husband went for a run while we all sat around and caught up Giada and other shows.  After Wegmans subs and a little yard work, we broke and the boys went one way and Mom and I went the other.  We rode out to Aldie to the beautiful Bella Villa store.  Last time I visited this store it was in a different, much smaller location.  It's an adorable store with lots of beautiful things.  I found this great 2 tiered iron planter that I had to have.  I'm really looking to spice up our boring back deck this summer, and this is going to be perfect.  I can't wait to put plants in it!

Saturday night we went downtown to celebrate Mom's birthday.  We took her to one of our favorite restaurants, Siroc.  While there weren't any celebrity sitings, the food was fantastic.  We had the best table in the restaurant, in a back little corner. 

photo from Siroc's website



Mom and I started with the arugula salad with gorgonzola, golden beets, and pine nuts - yum.  Husband and dad shared appetizers.  One was the beef rolls with portabella mushrooms, polenta and gorgonzola cream.  The other was rabbit sausage with cabbage, potatoes and black truffle sauce.  

For dinner, 3 of us had pastas and dad had fish.  One of my favorite things about this restaurant is that you can do 2 half pasta orders.  It's the best when you can't make up your mind!  Husband and I had the saffron fettuccine with bolognese of beef tenderloin and pancetta - it was fantastic.  Husband and mom both had the butternut squash cappelacci with sage butter and raved about it.  Mom and I both also had the raviolini with gorgonzola and pistachio cream.  Oh man.  Dad had the branzino, which is a light white fish and said it was really good.  The wine also was great - we got a good recommendation from the waitress.  The food, wine, and service was all fantastic!  We got a couple of deserts too - and while they were good, they weren't as good as the rest of the meal. 

Sunday was another quiet day.  We did some travel planning for our fall trip to Barcelona.  My parents are going to join us for the week in Spain before we head to southern France for a week.  We got their flights booked and our apartment in the city for the week.  For lunch we went to Dogfish Ale House in Fairfax, one of our staple weekend locations.  The food is always good, staff is friendly and of course beer is good!  Then at halftime of the VCU game, they packed it up and headed south back to Richmond.  The rest of the day was full of some spring cleaning, watching husband try to install the new big black box thing (receiver) and Apple TV, basketball, and getting ready for the week.

I love having my parents come to visit!  It's great having them here, and Pearly Sue too!

Siroc

I love it when Best Man KT comes to visit, because it always means a fun dinner out in DC!  KT is a lawyer in Alabama, but will soon be moving to Montgomery to work for the new Attorney General Luther Strange.  Anyway...last weekend he was in town to be sworn into the DC Bar, and dinner with us!  We first went to Brasserie Beck for drinks - the boys had beer and I enjoyed a couple of French whites.  We also ordered the charcuterie plate - it was huge, and wonderful!  Several different meats to try along with some yummy crostinis and different spreads. 

Then we walked the 2 blocks to dinner at Siroc, one of the newer restaurants in DC.  We must have good taste because also dining at the restaurant that evening were (separately) Chief Justice John Roberts and US Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice.  There were secret service everywhere - they were a dead giveaway that someone important was in the room!  Dinner was fantastic.  It's a great northern Italian restaurant.  They have lots of delicious pastas, and you can order 2 half orders if you want to try a few.  The boys both did this, and I tried everything - they were all just wonderful.  I had a the pork tenderloin - it was good, but not as good as the pasta!  It was very reasonably priced and a had a good wine list.  We'll definitely go back, and you should put it on your DC list of restaurants!