Second song that I am obsessed with lately is a new one by Zac Brown Band. I was going through the iTunes top 200 because that seems to be one of the only ways that I find and listen to music these days, and I noticed that they had quite a few new ones from their latest album release. This album is VERY different from their previous albums with a much more pop/rock/country blend. I can't say it's my absolute favorite as I'll always love their country ballads such as "Colder Weather" and "Goodbye in Her Eyes", but it certainly isn't bad music and there are some catchy songs on there. My favorite that I listened to and then BOUGHT (again I don't buy music) is "Bittersweet" it's mostly country with a little pop/rock twist at the end and I love it! It starts off real slow and sweet and has a great bridge and climax! I can't find a video of it yet, so you'll have to check it out on iTunes or Amazon or something :)
Current Song Obessions: Shut Up And Dance by WALK THE MOON and Bittersweet by Zac Brown Band5/8/2015
I haven't gone dancing in awhile. I'm not a crazy dancer, but sometimes I just get the urge to go out with my girls and dance the night away. I had heard "Shut Up and Dance" by WALK THE MOON maybe once or twice before (no idea where since I don't listen to the radio), and I had liked it but didn't go search it out to listen. But then recently I was out with friends dancing (yay!) and this song came on. To dance to this song that's title is "Shut Up and Dance" is so just empowering and FUN. Seriously, this song is freaking fun and that's why I love it. I've had it in my head all day and I even bought it on iTunes and I don't ever buy anything on iTunes anymore. I don't have much else to say except for I'm obsessed. *Also, the video before is just pure happiness-great idea! Second song that I am obsessed with lately is a new one by Zac Brown Band. I was going through the iTunes top 200 because that seems to be one of the only ways that I find and listen to music these days, and I noticed that they had quite a few new ones from their latest album release. This album is VERY different from their previous albums with a much more pop/rock/country blend. I can't say it's my absolute favorite as I'll always love their country ballads such as "Colder Weather" and "Goodbye in Her Eyes", but it certainly isn't bad music and there are some catchy songs on there. My favorite that I listened to and then BOUGHT (again I don't buy music) is "Bittersweet" it's mostly country with a little pop/rock twist at the end and I love it! It starts off real slow and sweet and has a great bridge and climax! I can't find a video of it yet, so you'll have to check it out on iTunes or Amazon or something :) This trip to D.C. came about when I was back home in October visiting friends during Homecoming. I already have my trips essentially planned out for the next three years (you think I'm kidding), so I already had an idea that I would do a 3-4 day weekend in D.C. this April. I wanted to go for a couple of reasons: 1) I hadn't been since I was 10 years old and wanted to visit as an adult and 2) to see the cherry blossoms! I had a weekend picked out already and so when Laura and Emily, two of my besties from college, (well technically Emily and I have been besties for a long time) said they were thinking of a trip to D.C. I said that we should go at the same time and meet up! Yay, I love how things can work out like that :) So, that is how the trip happened. I got to DC on my own via Baltimore and they flew from Iowa on Friday morning and we were meeting at the hotel in Arlington. Day 1: I woke up in Maryland that morning at my friend Mellissa's place, gathered all of my stuff and we drove the hour to downtown/Capitol Hill DC. I had looked up good breakfast places in DC and came across Ted's Bulletin-a diner type of a restaurant with the theme of being an old 40'sish era Newspaper. The menu was on a newspaper, the bathrooms had doors with frosted glass and a person's name-stating it was their office, Some Like It Hot was playing on a big TV screen on the wall, yellow and black diner booths and seats lined the room-the decor was ON POINT. The big draw was that they made their own homemade pop tarts! I had Nana's Beer Biscuits and Sausage Gravy, which was delicious! Sweet and savory and yum! The pop tarts were pretty good, but not wonderful-they needed more filling-not enough blueberries and cheesecake in my blueberry cheesecake pop tart! Aside from that, I highly recommend the place for breakfast-it was fun and yummy! Sadly, it was time for Mellissa and I to part :( I'll have to come back to visit the area again when she's not working/being awesome and graduating law school. After finishing up breakfast, Mellissa drove me to my hotel in Arlington where I was to meet Laura and Emily. Or at least I thought it was my hotel. Apparently, much like my mishap in San Antonio, there are multiple Days Inns in Arlington. I had Mellissa put Days Inn Arlington into the GPS without even looking to make sure it was the correct address, ugh! You'd think I would learn by now! So, I had to find the nearest Arlington Bus to take me to the correct Days Inn Arlington (the one near the Pentagon). Oh well, I made it and met up with Em and Laura at Mickey D's across the street from the hotel. We dropped off my things and booked it out of there because we had an appointment at Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley's office for a Capitol Tour! We navigated our way into DC quite well! I had to pick up a SmarTrip card for the DC metro on our way. Here's a sidenote/rant: it's expensive and not very helpful for tourists. I understand that this is how they make their money because everything else is free, but jeez! They have varying prices depending on the time of day and where you are going, and so I had no clue how much money to put on the card. A trip during rush hour could have costed $5.50 one way! Discounted transfers weren't very discounted and it was annoying having to tap your card on the way in and the way out. Okay rant over, and now I appreciate the MBTA a little bit more. We got of at the Archives stop and hurriedly walked to the Hart Senate Office Building where Grassley's office is on the first floor because he is one of the most senior Senate members (since 1981)-so he gets a nice, big office :) We had a small tour group of Iowans (and a few Missourans) and were led by a young Iowan going to school at George Washington University. He only graduated high school in 2013 and already had a job in Grassley's office-pretty impressive! He took us through all the "back ways" and underground passage to get from the senate buildings to the Capitol. We even got to ride on the little underground trolley from the Senate buildings to the Capitol, quite fast and a short trip! While on the tour (a very speedy, one hour tour) we were taken all around the Capitol through the visitor's center, the Old Supreme Court Chambers, the Old Senate Chambers, the crypt, and the Rotunda. It was pretty cool. It was a shame however, that we went on a Friday when Congress/Senate were not in session, but then you could actually go into the current chambers. Seems a little backwards, right? The Rotunda was my favorite part (besides the underground tram) because of the paintings depicting major events in American history. A neat little tidbit is that the artist who painted the paintings in the Rotunda painted himself in a lot of them, always facing in the opposite direction as everyone else because he didn't like the government. After the Capitol tour we swiftly walked to the Library of Congress (which as my co-worker stated is "like visiting the mother ship" for us librarians) and saw the few pertinent things such as The Gutenberg Bible, the main reading room, and Thomas Jefferson's personal library. I had heard that anyone could get their Library of Congress library card by showing any state ID, so I asked a person at the Information Desk about where I can do that. That lady was a little crazy and should NOT be manning an information desk in the country's largest and most important library. She talked for awhile and still didn't really answer my question. She said something like anyone with a state ID, but then she rambled on about the many different libraries and gave me a paper about the website and such...none of us had any idea what she was saying so sadly we did not get a card :( But I did buy a Library of Congress water bottle! We leisurely left the LOC and walked along the Capitol grounds and taking pictures because we thought we still had until 7:30 to make it to the National Archives-turns out nope! They let the last people in at 5 PM. We had thought "high season" hours meant April-October as we had read, especially with it being Cherry Blossom season but apparently our information was incorrect. Darn. So, we decided to just head to a restaurant for dinner and then head back. the girls were tired because they'd been up since 4 AM and we needed to rest up for our very busy day tomorrow. We headed into Downtown/Chinatown to Matchbox, a pizza place that had some good reviews. There was a bit of a wait, so we had dessert before dinner at Potbelly's with their cookies and cookie sandwiches :) At dinner we ended up with two pizzas: Prosciutto White and Spicy Meatball, yummy! Sometimes (or a lot of the time) pizza just hits the spot. Next we headed on back and spent the next few hours gossiping and catching up-so wonderful to be with some of my best friends!! Day 2: We woke up at the crack of dawn (normal time for Laura and early for Em and I) and got ready, then had our continental breakfast. For a budget place to stay, the Days Inn was pretty great. Clean, good continental breakfast, and really not that difficult to get into the city. We hopped on the bus, then switched the metro and got off at the Smithsonian as the first stop of our day was the Washington Monument. We arrived at the Washington Monument early so that we could get tickets for the first trip up at 9 AM. So we get there and there is a MASSIVE line. We stood at the end of it, but then started piecing together that this may be a line for something else. Yesterday I had remembered hearing someone say in passing that there was a huge concert on the Mall (The National Mall is the big patch of green that many of the monuments stand on and the museums surround) for Earth Day. We asked someone behind us just to be sure and then went in search of the real entrance. We finally found it (the same entrance as the festival), but there was no line! We got right in an grabbed our tickets for nine. Did I mention it was a gorgeous day? High was 80 and it was sunny :) We went inside and up in the monument which was really exciting for me because last time when I visited it was closed for construction. We went up the 555 ft. 5 in to just about the top and saw some great views of the city, Virginia, and Maryland. It was also awesome because they had some maps/views of what each direction looked like and it oriented us-so we knew that over in this direction were the Jefferson, FDR, Korean and MLK memorials, and so on. SO happy we went early to this because it would have been hell to get through there when the Earth Day festivities were underway. Next, we decided to walk in that direction towards the tidal Basin and the many monuments around it. Alas, peak bloom for cherry blossoms was not even a full week before, but as I discovered in my research that peak lasts only about three days :( Afterwards the trees are basically completely green as all of the blooms fall off. This is mostly what we saw around the Tidal Basin (the place where the highest concentration of blossoms are planted). On our walk over (it was kind-of on the way), we saw the WWII memorial and saw our first of many Honor Flights visiting. So glad and amazed that there are still veterans of WWII alive and that they are able to have trips like this. Also on the way to the Tidal Basin and Jefferson Memorial, we saw some pretty flowers-such vibrant colors- so we posed with them, of course! Finally, as we rounded the corner to the Jefferson Memorial we saw a group of people crowding around an area. Turns out it was the one lonesome blossom in bloom! So I took A LOT of pics, as did everyone else. Then we finally arrived at the Jefferson Memorial, which looks a lot like the Lincoln Memorial from the outside with the large columns and such. It was pretty cool, but for reasons I can't explain, I get why it's the memorial that people forget to mention. Then we continued our walk along the basin and visited the FDR memorial. I remember this one from last time having running water in parts (that's about all I remember-ridiculous), but for some reason it wasn't cascading down everywhere that it should have been which was kind-of disappointing. But something I didn't remember about it was just HOW big/long the memorial is-it was quite impressive! I also liked the homage to Eleanor Roosevelt as when I was little and in TAG we had a "Night of the Notables" where we had to dress up like a notable person in history and have a presentation and booth all decorated about them-I chose Eleanor. Once we got to the "end" of the memorial we realized that it was really the beginning as it moves along according to his different terms in office. Oh well, we got the gist of it ;) The next two memorials were two of my favorites for their presentation. The next up I was very excited for because it hadn't been here when I visited last. This was the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial. I have always had an interest in Civil Rights history, and have traveled down to Selma, Alabama a couple of times for service trips and so this monument was quite exciting to me. I thought the actual monument of him was quite striking, and impressive and I also enjoyed the wall of quotes behind him. I know many of the presidents and people who have memorials also have quotes, but I believe MLK is one of THE most quotable people with his comments on justice and peace. The next memorial was the Korean War Memorial which also has a really impressive presentation of soldiers in their gear walking quietly through the long grass. You can just imagine this picture of soldiers poised for combat in Korea. It was very moving. The next up was THE monument, or at least the one that everyone knows-The Lincoln Memorial. I can confidently say that this is the memorial/monument that the most people are excited to see for a number of reasons. It's iconic and on many American things and in movies/televisions shows; it's where famous speeches have occurred/will occur in the future; and Lincoln was one of the best presidents if not the best president. He's certainly my favorite. It was really exciting to see the monument and take great pictures (see below)! I do wish that there would have been water in the reflection pool (not sure why it was dry), because there's another iconic view of the National Mall and the Washington Monument, a place where thousands of people marched, protested, and witnessed great leaders speak. Basically, I loved it and I wish it would have been complete with the water, but oh well! I've learned that nothing is ever perfect when visiting DC and this was only my second time there! Next up, was the Vietnam War Memorial which is also pretty powerful, with the full list of names of American casualties. Finally, our last "memorial" or site we visited before grabbing some lunch (oh yeah, we did grab something really quick before at just about the only cafe on this stretch of monuments) was The White House. We had tried to get a tour of this, had emailed a solid three (?) months before and we still didn't get a tour. Dang. Oh well, we were tired and needed nourishment and so walking by it and taking some pictures (look at that lawn!) was sufficient enough for us. It was about this time that I started hurting. Yes, my feet and back ached but what I really mean is that my skin started hurting. Yup, I was sunburned with a capital S. This happens to me easily and I should have known but any other time we had stopped before this I hadn't noticed and it didn't hurt, but ALL OF A SUDDEN it burned. Badly. We went to the bathroom and I saw the damage-crazy burn lines were already starting. Yikes. Next up was getting some lunch at the National Museum of the American Indian in their cafe, which was no where near as close as we thought so we walked there for a solid 20-30 minutes while the sun kept beating down on my sunburn. We finally made it to the museum (which is one of the coolest designed buildings in DC) and the cafe into the blissful air conditioning. I wanted to visit this cafe because they had local cuisine from all of the Native American regions of the two continents (North and South America). I ended up choosing food from my own area (Great Plains) because it sounded really good, but still unique and something I had never had before. I got the "Indian Taco" which was fry bread with buffalo chili and lettuce, tomatoes, and cheese. Mmmmm it was fantastic! Fry bread is quite sweet actually and reminds me a bit of the bread that is used for funnel cakes at the fair. It was the perfect combination of salty and sweet and I was very happy that we had made the trek to the cafe. Next, we were tired and lazy and also trying to stay away from the sun as much as possible, so we took the metro the two-three stops to get off near the National Museum of American History. Here we meandered our way through the various floors and exhibits on American wars, transportation, The First Ladies, and the Presidents. It was quite interesting as I love history and especially American History, but by the end we were exhausted and ready to eat, but we had a little bit until our reservations at Second State in Dupont Circle. So we just sat outside in the shade for awhile, and it was glorious haha. We eventually headed to Second State a bit early to see if they could get us in before our 6:45 reservation. We arrived and they weren't busy at all, which was great for us because it meant they COULD seat us early, yay! I had picked Second State because it seemed to be one of the "it" places right now with great reviews and a yummy drink list. It's "theme" was Pennsylvania. A weird theme, yes but it means they had pierogies on the menu and Wigle Whiskey and that was all I needed to know to sell me on it :) Let's be real, I picked Second State for the pierogies only. I felt a little uncomfortable in the restaurant because although I applaud my effort in finding a swanky place NOT full of tourists, it meant that us dressing like tourists (tennis shoes, water bottles in tow, sweaty, sunburned) was not quite up to par for the restaurant. Oh well, they didn't treat us any differently and we still really enjoyed our experience. The ambiance was excellent and the food and drink were top notch (or at least what I had). What did I order, you ask? The pierogie appetizer of course, as well as the mushroom bruschetta because of my new-found obsession with mushrooms. Popcorn was given to us at the beginning instead of bread or chips and it was definitely hitting the spot as well. I also bought a cocktail called the "Second Statement" which had Wigle whiskey in it. I am obsessed with Wigle because I knew them when they were just babies in the spirit world. Haha no really, when I lived in Pittsburgh three years ago, my friend and I stumbled upon this small distillery in The Strip District. They had no one there visiting, and the samples of their basic whiskeys were free! The next time I visited about 8 months later, they had tables and chairs, tours, fun cocktails, their tasting was NOT free anymore-but contained whiskey as well as rum and gin, and they were BUSY. They literally grew from practically nothing to SOMETHING really fast. So I love supporting them, and they've finally made it to MA now and it makes me very happy :) After dinner, we picked up a bottle of wine and a bottle of beer to take back to the hotel where we relaxed, gossiped some more and watched a bit of TV. Day 3: We woke up quite early again because we had yet another relatively full day. After grabbing breakfast at our hotel, we got on the bus to Pentagon Station and then walked around the Pentagon to the 9/11 Memorial. Luckily we arrived and were able to finish seeing the memorial before a huge busload of teenagers got there to visit it. It was an interesting memorial- uniquely designed, stark, but moving. As we were leaving though and the kids were moving in, they were walking all around it and sitting on the memorial pieces and Emily was *this close* to yelling at them like the responsible adults we have come to be. It was a little weird that we have gotten to that age now, that we want to harp on disrespectful children, but it's true. After seeing the Pentagon Memorial we hopped on the metro one stop to Arlington National Cemetery. The weather today was much chillier than the previous days but still not too bad and better than winter! We opted to walk to all of the main stops in the cemetery because the trolley thing was expensive, plus we felt we had enough time and we did. The first stop was the JFK Burial Site and Memorial which was surrounded like many monuments and memorials by famous quotes that he had said. Buried near him were also his brothers Robert, Edward, and Joseph Kennedy, Jr. Next, we walked up to the Arlington House, which unfortunately we could not walk in, but it gave a good view of the cemetery. Next we walked passed many minor monuments and grave sites on our way to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. We leisurely walked over there stopping to take pictures at the view blossoms we found and at a little gazebo. When we got closer we realized the changing of the guard was happening and so we rushed to watch the end of it. It turns out we hadn't missed much and they had just started. Phew! Glad we got to see that. The soldiers wore fancy shoes that are almost a tap-shoe like sound when they about-face and click their heels together-pretty neat. We walked a bit around the Memorial Amphitheater, stopped off at a few more memorials to the Challenger and Columbia, and the USS Maine. We checked out the Confederate Circle which I thought would be more impressive and then looped our way back to the exit. As we were leaving the hordes of middle-aged/older-aged tourists were coming through and we overheard someone say it was an Iowa tour group! Laura's aunt was visiting DC at the same time and so we creepily looked at all of the people for her but didn't see her. It's still possible she may have been in the group though-that would have been a trip, right? Next up, we grabbed the metro into DC closer to Logan Circle and on 14th Street. I am been told this was a hopping area and lo' and behold one of the most talked about brunches was in this area-Birch and Barley. It just so happened that this bar has a world-class renown beer bar upstairs as well, called ChurchKey. Haha, yes I planned this. Brunch was at 11:30 so it was totally acceptable to try a few local DC brews. Because it's a popular, busy place when I had called for reservations about a week ago, they were full for around 11-2 in their regular seating. But they had some seats at the chef's counter, which I think was preferable to sitting at a regular table. Granted, there was only 3 of us and only about 6 or so seats there so it's not always an option for everyone, but it was a really cool experience to watch the kitchen and everything come out of it! The big draw I had seen on this menu besides some unique normal items was that they made their own donuts and had a fresh trio of them on their menu. We got one to share as it had 2 big donuts and a couple little donut holes-the flavors were: Toffee Bacon, Lemon-Poppy Glazed, and Bittersweet Chocolate. The Toffee Bacon had some bourbon in there for sure, I normally love bourbon but it was a little heavy-handed. But overall, they were pretty darn good-I am in a big doughnut faze right now. For my main meal I ordered the House-Brined Corned Beef Hash that had duck eggs in it. DUCK eggs. Yeah, I hadn't ever had them either and it turns out that they they are GINORMOUS! I couldn't taste any difference, but man were they huge. My meal was pretty good albeit quite heavy. I also tried some of Em and Laura's as they had some of the hash browns and the homemade sausage-I was really digging the sausage. Overall, a fantastic meal and experience! The reason we were so specific on our time for eating brunch was because we had reserved tickets to go to the Ford's Theatre at 1:30 and needed to make sure we had plenty of time to get there. Luckily, it was only about a 15 minute walk. We got to Ford's Theatre and waited in line a teeny bit before they let us in to see the museum about Lincoln's life and the plot(s) to kidnap and assassinate him and other members of office. It was really interesting as I did not know the details of how deep the plan had been to include killing the vice president and secretary of state, and so on, as well as killing Lincoln. What I DID remember from the last time I visited Ford's Theatre was sitting in the theatre and hearing the detailed story of that night and how everything happened. I also thought that we could see inside the box where he was shot, but now it's possible I may have imagined that. But anywho, we saw the museum and then went up into the Theatre, where we could see where the Lincoln's were sitting during the show and where John Wilkes Booth came in during the funniest line in the whole play (so the laughter would drown out the gunfire) and shot the President in the head. We also saw the seat where the Presidents (most Presidents since then) have sat when seeing a show in this theatre, because after all, it IS still a running theatre. While the talk was going though, the past few days caught up with us and someone nodded off, but I won't say who (*cough, Emily, cough*). We left the theatre, I grabbed a magnet of Lincoln at the gift shop (he IS my favorite president after all), and went to go wait in line to enter the house across the street from the theatre where Lincoln was taken after he had been shot and where he passed away. I didn't get to see this last time I had visited because we came in July (worst time to visit DC) and the old building was too hot to let anyone inside. So, we waited in line and saw the house and the room and it was nothing too impressive, but at least we have visited where Lincoln died. Lastly, we took the metro on over to the Capitol Hill area (where I brunched a few days before with Mellissa-like right next door) to another place on my list called Ambar, a Balkan tapas restaurant. The few tapas and wine I had here were excellent, I would definitely go back there to try more. I had the Balkan kebab with a glass of wine from Macedonia. My favorite part of the meal, however, was the dessert I had-The Forest Gnocchi. It was a hodge-podge of things (my favorite) all put in a bowl, then the waiter topped it off with black tea sauce and I was told to mix it well altogether. It was SO good and you could honestly taste every single flavor at different times from start-finish. The ingredients were: chocolate mousse, bitter orange cake, ground chocolate, orange gelee, tarragon gnocchi, passionfruit espuma, and black tea sauce. I legit don't know what half of those things are haha! I was glad we came to this restaurant. And at this time, I want to thank my travel companions for humoring me and being wonderful and checking out the different restaurants that I had picked out. All were well-rated of course, but also had some unique ingredients or items on the menu and that is what I love, but maybe not something that they usually look for. So, thanks Laura and Emily for joining me anyways, I hope it was all okay :) After dinner, we hopped back on the metro towards our hotel (it was a long ride, and I feel bad but my friends did not feel well from the transportation at all), but we finally made it back to the hotel where I packed up my things to leave for the airport. Luckily, the airport is relatively close (or at least on this side of the river) and it was an easy jaunt over there. I had no problems with my flight whatsoever, and I made it safely home.
Heading back to DC had been on my list for the East Coast for awhile, and I am so glad that it worked out for me to join two of my closest friends in a trip there. I had a blast walking, learning, eating, catching up with friends, and getting sunburned (just kidding on that last one). |
Welcome!Hi all! My name is Laura and I decided to start a blog about the things I am most passionate about, namely: Food, traveling, reading, watching TV and movies, and listening to music. I'm a Midwesterner living in Nashville, and I am a librarian. Categories
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