A weekend as a Tour Guide

Living in Washington is an amazing experience; however, like any city, one begins exploring again when a friend or relative comes to visit.  One of my best friends, Julia, was able to visit for a weekend, and I was so excited to get to show her around.  Friday evening we started by going to We the Pizza, which is just a few blocks from us and is amazing.  If you don’t trust my judgment, know that Julia is a snobby New-Yorker when it comes to Pizza and even she likes it!  After that, I wanted her to get to know my friends here in D.C. so we hung out in the Congressional for a while, then decided to take a night time monument walk-as is required when you live around the corner from the Supreme Court and the Capitol.  Despite all of the nice weather we had experienced leading up to the weekend, it was freezing, so everyone else ignored Zach and I’s suggestion that we keep going (in spite of our amusing galloping down the mall in the style of the Monty Python) we headed back before we made it all the way to the Washington Monument. 

The next morning we got up to, what I consider an early start on a weekend, and got brunch at a local place.  It was fairly hipster as many places in D.C. are but it was delicious so I won’t complain.   We then went to the National Archives to see the Magna Carta (my previous 2 times visiting it wasn’t there, but 3^rd times a charm!), Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights.  We didn’t, unfortunately, have time to wander around the public galleries because we needed to see the J. Edgar Hoover Building before heading to the Capitol where Elliot give us a tour.  So after our stop at one of the ugliest building in D.C., with several pictures being taken (her dream job is with the FBI), we headed to the Capitol with a short stop at the Botanical Gardens, one of my favorite places in D.C.

Elliot then gave us a wonderful, extended tour of the capitol.  He was very good at it.  Having been on three it was interesting to see what each tour guide talked about.  We then grabbed lunch at a Chinese Restaurant (it was 4 so we were the only people there), before heading to GW University.  It was freezing and the wind was so strong, so we hurried to our end goal of the Elliot School, where Julia had applied.  After seeing the school we headed to Georgetown and did some shopping.  Then it seemed like no one else was going to meet us there so we went to grab some food.  We ended up picking up Crepes and they were delicious.  Then Elliot decided that he and our friend Alex would join us to get Ethiopian food, well I can never turn Ethiopian food down, so Julia and I managed to eat that too.  It was all delicious.  Then, exhausted we went home and watched a movie.