still visiting the east coast, but apparently keeping west coast time. sleeping in late / staying up late. kinda screws up finding dinner when a lot of places are closed in the city. fortunately, there is a very tasty pizza joint less than a block away, a la pieology but not, open late.
no set plans, since i grew up not too far away, and we seem to vacation here in dc once a year. it has rained off and on the past couple of days, but i love it. today and the next couple will be in the eighties and sunny.
talked my better half to getting out of town, took the metro out to old town alexandria, rode a free trolley down the main street to the waterfront. walked around the artists' colony at an old torpedo factory, then walked up the street a bit to find food. seemed to be food of all kinds to choose from, but just settled on seafood. it was good, we ate too much, and were too full to even use the two for one coupon at ben and jerry's in the tourist guidebook. oh well.
decided to take a water taxi back over to georgetown. this one ran a recorded soundtrack babbling on about various buildings and historical points of interest along the way. mostly my better half stood at the front of the boat taking pictures of airplanes overhead, flying in and out of reagan national airport, which has a landing strip right damn next to the river, so no pressure on pilots to touch down on pavement and not water. must be fun in winter, when the snow and wind freezes the river and ices the runway.
landed the boat in georgetown, and took a ten minute walk back around the watergate hotel and through georgetown university, to the foggy bottom metro station. back to the hotel to dump our cameras and chill for a bit.
then to end the day, took the metro out to nationals stadium, to watch them play the mets. down inside the metro station, the sheer number of people passing through as game time gets closer, is monitored by some seriously grim anti-terrorist security guys, with bomb sniffing dogs, and dudes carrying m-16s. the station is just outside the park...when you come up from the underground station, there's the stadium.
we run the gauntlet of people selling counterfit team logo crap, scalpers looking to buy tickets, homeless people asking for money. we needed tickets, and there was a line of about twenty people at the main windows, but my better half went around the corner, to what appears to be will call, but were actually just additional ticket windows, and had no wait at all.
we like to sit up at the very top rows of seating, up behind home plate, those were sold out, so we were up just off center on the third base side. that side is shaded from the setting sun for an evening game, and up top, you get a breeze coming up off the river, which is also a few blocks away.
it was a good game, several homeruns were hit, and the home team won 7-4.
the stampede back down to the metro feels like cattle into the chute. they need people whose job would be to jam as many people as possible into the train so the doors can close, packed like sardines.
anyway, a few more days to go. no idea what we'll do each day until we go out the door. and that's just the way we like it.
