Saturday was gorgeous, so we walked from Eastern Market, down the Mall to see the Inauguration set-up, to Georgetown, and back. Late in the afternoon we baked Cookie Butter Crumb Cake Bars that both smelled and tasted fantastic (recipe to come). Those bars were soon on the way to my friend The Marathoner’s apartment for a The Princess Bride viewing party. Somehow I was born in the 80s and have managed to never see The Princess Bride all the way through – Inconceivable! (But I have read the book so that’s got to count for something?)
At 2 pm on Sunday, Jess and I headed up to Sidamo, an Ethiopian coffee shop on H Street, where they do a traditional coffee ceremony every weekend. The owner welcomed us in, but apparently it starts before 2 because they’d already done the roasting part. We ordered coffee and he sat us down in front of a woman boiling coffee, testing it, and pouring it into little cups.
Sunday night was our weekend’s main event – dinner at Thai X-ing!
If you recall, I’ve done this before, and the second time was just as good as the first. It’s family style traditional Thai food in a little rowhouse/restaurant: 8 courses, Sundays are vegetarian, and they just keep bringing you food!
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| Sweet and Sour Tofu Soup |
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| Rice and Beans, aka YUMMMMMM. |
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| Mango Coconut Sticky Rice |
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| For a while there we resigned ourselves to experiencing Inauguration next to the Department of Agriculture... |
I am nowhere near that ambitious, but as this is my first Inauguration living in DC, I thought I should go see what there was to be seen. We left our apartment at 10 am and started walking. The streets are weird and re-routed in all kinds of ways, so to get to the Mall we pretty much walked to the Mall, then walked a 3-mile loop down through Southwest to get up to the “non-ticketed” area.
We were in the overflow by the Monument and could kind of sort of see and hear Obama’s speech on a big screen. I feel like I experienced Inauguration enough to count that as a win! DC gets crazy for this weekend – getting home was another insanely loopy walk, involving army men and tank-ish trucks, but eventually we made it.
Monday night I went to see Silver Linings Playbook, which I’ve been wanting to see since before Christmas. I’m not sure how to categorize it – I guess it’s a romantic comedy, but a very depressing one…it's also a lot about football (I guess that's where the "playbook" part comes in?). It was good but I think my expectations were a little too high. I LOVE Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper though! The scenes with them together are the best.
