A Day in the District

Instead of going out of the city for the weekend, Lady Hiva and I decided to go into the city. Washington, DC is home to many national festivals, marches, and other events. This weekend we attended two of them! The first one was the National Book Festival and the second was the local H-street festival.  

It seems that most often Lady and I find new exciting things to see on our way to another event. When we parked in DC we started to walk towards the National Mall for the National Book Festival and we needed to use the bathroom (Sharing the porta-potty on the Mall with thousands of other people is not something Lady or I are ready to do) and we went into a place that had a food court. It ended up being the Old Post Office. I had never been in there before.

The beautiful stone building has a gorgeous courtyard that is several stories high and a glass ceiling. One of the best parts of the Old Post office is the clock and bell tower. The tower is the home to the “Congressional Bells” that you can explore by stairs or elevator. We took the elevator—thanks to Lucky and his stroller.

The tower is 315 feet tall. It was the “first skyscraper” in the District.  There is an observatory at the top and it is SO remarkable. You can look through glass and wire windows on all four sides. The view is spectacular. We stood up there “re-discovering” DC for nearly thirty minutes. How is the for a bathroom stop? Haha.

The National Book Festival was HUGE. Big white tents were separated by genre and each tent had guest authors to share their story. My favorite quote of the day was Jeff Chu, “We are all storytellers; Storytellers of our own amazing lives.” I totally agree.

We moseyed around saw a bit of everything. The largest tent was the 50 States tent. All 50 states and all the U.S. Territories were represented. Children could get a “passport” with each state and as they visited the table for that state they received a stamp. We had a great time. Utah gave us chocolate from the Lion House and Hawaii was familiar with women wearing muumuus and the free spirited Aloha. Lady had a good time meeting everyone there--A touch of home away from home.

 

Our second surprise place was a small diner called the Trolley Diner. It was fun, bright and gaudy. But we loved it. The best part was all the help was Filipino. We laughed and laughed as we talked together. So great to see Filipinos, it makes us feel right at home. 

The third "find" was a cupcake store called Crumbs. DC is littered with cupcake stores, there is no shortage of them at all. But this one was different because of the help. We walked in and Lady needed a bandaide. While we chose our cupcakes, I asked the two girls working where the nearest drugstore was to buy some (DC is littered with Walgreens and CVS too). One of the girls said, "Just a second:" and she came back with a bandaide that she just gave to Lady. That was so COOL! What service. 

 

The H-street festival was less organized and more local. They closed H street NE and there were concerts, dance stages, food trucks, and stores lining the street. We loved seeing the array of people there to enjoy the day. Then it started to rain! And rain hard. Luckily we had two large umbrellas and were not too far from Mongoose when it happened. We were only minimally wet.

The day was so great! We were able to stay at home and enjoy some of the great aspects of living in Washington, DC.