Greetings from Washington, DC

I know Boston. I know NYC. I know Chicago. I know San Francisco (or used to.) I don't know Washington, DC. But I'm a city lover from the jump, so I was happy to have the recent opportunity to spend the weekend there.

A couple of years ago, an empty-nester friend, who'd already decamped from the 'burbs to Boston proper, decided to make the move to DC, where one of her daughters - and two of her grandkids - live. (The other daughter is in Australia with the other grands, but that would have been too much of a leap, re-lo wise.)

Anyway, her husband was heading out for a golf weekend with the boys, so she asked if I wanted to come down.

Why not?

Jennie met me at National - I really can't bring myself to say Reagan - and we took the Metro to her 'hood: Eastern Market, which is part of Capitol Hill. 

(Landing at National, I realized that it had been so long, the last time I'd flown there, it was National. And it only had one terminal.)

Other than a little walk around the 'hood, we didn't do much on Day One, other than catch up (and eat and drink wine: nothing wrong there). 

But what a wonderful 'hood it is. 

Other than Georgetown, I'd never actually done a walkabout in any DC neighborhood.

It was love at first sight: all those charming row houses, including Jennie's. 

Day Two we were more ambitious, walking (10 miles) around the city.

We walked to the Mall, where on my first trip to Washington, I demonstrated against the Vietnam War at the November 1969 Moratorium, where we marched and, at the rally, sang "Give Peace a Chance" with Pete Seeger, and "If I Had a Hammer" with Peter Pall and Mary. It was a bitter cold day, and my friend Joyce and I stopped in at a drugstore (People's?) and spent three bucks a piece on cheesy yellow blankets that left a hefty amount of lint all over our pea jackets. Because we went off-plan to get those blankets, we didn't go to demonstrate at the Justice Department with our friends. So we didn't get tear-gassed. 

Back in present day, we went by the White House, which is just beautiful. Ditto the Capitol Building - but it gave me the chills to think of January 6th. And it made me angry to think of the fractious imbeciles in the House who seem hell bent on destroying the country, or at least our democracy. (Not that there aren't any fractious imbeciles in the Senate. Looking at you, Tommy Tuberville.)

We went by the Supreme Court, which made my stomach churn. (And, yeah, I went a bit fractious on my own and shot the bird.)

We didn't "do" any of the monuments, but I'd already been to the Lincoln, the Jefferson, and the Vietnam memorials on a previous tourist trip to DC with my husband, way back in the mid-1980's. (Probably during the Reagan Administration.)

Chef José Andrés - the brilliant humanitarian whose World Central Kitchen shows up wherever and whenever in the world there's a humanitarian need - has a bunch Washington restaurants, and we had a late lunch at one of them. We did the tasting menu, which was fabulous - six courses, each of which had 2-4 components. All wonderful, but too much of a good thing: we brought a lot of food home.

On a full stomach, we kept walking.

We wanted to go up into the tower of the Waldorf Astoria, the hotel that replaced the Trump grift-o extravaganza in the old Post Office building, but, alas, the tower was closed for the day. (We did get to use the fancy ladies room in the lobby.)

So we soldiered on to the National Gallery, where we spent some time in the modern building. Like all the DC museums that are run by the government, it was free. Our taxpayer money in action, and what a great use. 

More walking around the Capitol Hill neighborhood, and back to Jennie's.

Where we had a little vino and ended up playing Cagney and Lacey, sleuthing whatever happened to a hideous murder case that Kevin had been on the jury for in the mid-1970's. We found that the murderer, a teenager at the time, who had slit his mother's throat and raped her, had been released and was back in his hometown. And that his younger brother, who had witnessed to crime, seems to have had a reasonably good and productive life: college education, good jobs, a couple of kids, an interesting hobby. (Thank you, Google.) 

Jennie, of course, texted our discoveries to Kevin, who - predictably - thought we were nuts.

On Sunday: more walking around the charming neighborhood and a quick visit with her daughter's family. They also live in a charming row house, a couple of blocks from Jennie. An excellent reason for K&J to have moved to DC. 

Jennie drove me to the airport - a two-fer, as Kevin was arriving - so I got to a 30-second meet and greet with him when she dropped me off.

Next time, we'll do more museum-ing. I want to see the Holocaust Museum and the Museum of African American History. I want to see the World War II memorial. 

Mostly I came away adding Washington DC to the list of cities I would have been perfectly happy to live in. I suppose it helped that the weather was perfect: no humidity, 70-ish, not a cloud in the sky. I don't imagine if I'd been there in the swampy summer I would have been so enamored. But I loved the neighborhoods, the vibrancy, the parks, the fact that there are no tall buildings. 

What a beautiful city. Too bad that, these days, it's the site of so much soul-sucking, mind-numbing horseshit on the part of a part (R-) of our government. Sigh...