d.c.

Me and one of my best gal pals went on a little trip to Washington D.C. this past weekend.

It was lovely.

We slept in, ordered room service for breakfast, and rode bikes all over that town.  We also squeezed in some serious life chats, which are a must for any girls' weekend. (Ladies, am I right?)

All in all: my kind of weekend.

Carlie and I (and two of our other best friends-Caroline and Sam) were college roomies. First in a dorm, and then in a cute little house in Hyde Park in Austin our senior year of college.  Man, oh man, that house.  Talk about some memories. Someday I'll do a memory lane post about that house. {Yeah, right, I blog once a month.  Someday...} This picture pretty much sums it up.

Gets me every time!

Anyway, as luck would have it, Carlie is a fancy important engineer for the CIA NASA, and she currently is working in Virginia! Lucky me, because D.C. is a nice little meeting place for the two of us.

We both took the train in Friday night from our respective cities. By the time we got to the hotel, we were so starving we thought we would die a little hungry, and all of the restaurants were closed! So, we opted for a glass of wine (or two) and a late dinner at the hotel's restaurant. We had our requisite "let's plan our lives" conversation, which was accompanied by a good amount of giggles (and maybe some tears.  I mean, maybe...but if that's weird, then maybe not...I'm not telling).  FYI if anyone needs a good hotel recommendation for D.C., we stayed at the Hyatt right by Union Station, and I'd highly recommend it. It was very reasonably priced, super convenient, and if you forget your slippers or your teapot or your Woolite, Marion will send you some.  She won't be happy about it, but she'll send it to you.

I digress.

Anyway, Saturday morning, we slept in a little bit, ate a really yummy breakfast, and then we were off! I'm totally owning up to this now, but we definitely did the double-decker goofy tour bus.  It was a nice way to see the city, and if you want to hear the tour narrated in Spanish or Russian, there are headphones for that.  Hello, options. Not that I did that or anything. I mean, that would be weird right? :)

We stopped at the Washington Monument.  That thing is surrounded by about a million feet of scaffolding, due to the earthquake that happened in 2011, I believe.  Got to make sure it doesn't pull a total party foul and crash, apparently.

All of these pictures were taken with my phone, so I apologize for the Instagram-quality we have going on.

Now, lucky for us, there was a little bike stand right by the monument.  I call that: winning.

We rode our bikes for a little bit, and then had a late Lebanese foodtruck lunch of hummus and pita bread. It was pretty yummy.  The baklava, not so much. So, clearly, we needed some actual dessert after that! Hello, root beer floats! See the Capitol in the background?

#selfieforthewin

I can't tell you the last time I had a root beer float.  I distinctly remember making a Diet Coke float a time or two when I worked in the PICU (seriously, all of you PICU peeps get this. This was back in the good days before they took away the Goldfish and Diet Dr. Pepper).

Y'all, it was delicious.

After our snacky break, we then rode around some, turned my bike in, walked around in the rain like weirdos for 30 minutes trying to turn Carlie's bike in, turned Carlie's bike in, and got back on the bus. We went to the Holocaust museum late that afternoon, and may I just say: amazing.  It was incredibly moving, and also a little unnerving to think that the Holocaust happened fairly recently. I'd highly recommend going to that museum if you get the chance.

That evening, we went out to Georgetown for some dinner. Y'all, I could live there.  Such a cute area, great shopping, great restaurants. We ate at this yummy cute little Italian restaurant, Il Canale. It was SO good.  We had our fair share of wine and pizza at dinner, took the Circulator back to downtown, and then someone got the bright idea to go find a bike again.

Suffice to say: this idea surfaced around 11:00 pm or so, and we went to sleep at about 3:30 am Sunday morning.

If you are ever in D.C., and you go to Il Canale, do NOT drink their coffee with your tiramisu or you will be wide awake for hours.  It's like that book, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.

If you give Libby and Carlie jet fuel coffee at 10pm, they will end up wired and inspired.

They will get the brilliant idea to rent bikes by the White House and ride them to the Capitol, to the Vietnam War Memorial, to the Lincoln Memorial, to the Korean War Memorial, through a park or two, down by the Reflection Pond, to the Washington Monument, and back again.

Yeah.  That happened.

On our midnight travels, we met some ladies who work at the White House, we rigged a setup on my bike so we could jam to No Diggity while we zoomed around, we met some friends by the reflection pond, and we climbed up on the Einstein statue to rub its nose for good luck, to name a few.

Yep. We earned our beauty sleep that night.

Sunday, we made a quick jaunt to another museum, walked around in some gorgeous weather, bought a coffee mug with a mustache on it, and then-sadly-I had to hop back on my train to Philly.

All in all, it was a wonderful and fun weekend.  Zoomie, thanks for always making me laugh, and thanks for being my partner in crime.

I feel immeasurably blessed beyond belief to have the friends I do, and I must say that life would be awfully lonely without them. There is no greater gift, than the gift of friends.

Isn't that so true?

Have a great rest of your week, everybody!

xoxo

Libby