Oooh. The blank page. It's so much easier to design jewelry than to write, if you ask me.

So you get invited to a wedding in DC, and what do you do but make plans to spend at least a week there, which, by the way, is not enough. That is, unless you are a super-tourist and you pop out of your hotel, freshly rested, showered and fed by 7 a.m. and can walk and stand for six or so hours at a time.

Now, if you're me and Steve, you are much more concerned with late-night socializing than with early-morning touring. 'Sides, it's freezing at 7 a.m. in DC. Not that I would actually know, but the windows felt cold from the inside where I was wearing my thoughtfully-provided robe and slippers and rummaging around the room looking for the Alka Seltzer.

Why, praytell, the Alka Seltzer? Well, when you check into your hotel, slightly inebriated (we were still behaving quite well, thank you) at 2:30 a.m. or so, they call the manager.

Thankfully, and much to our delight, they call the manager to explain to you in pleading and very submissive tones that the inn is full for the night (since it's already morning, we presume), but since you're here (probably not much to their delight) they have arranged for a room at a very nice neighboring hotel and they'll send you and your luggage right over in a cab.

Prudently sleeping until 10 a.m. (note once again, that this is not the recommended start time for you uber-tourists), we heeded the night-desk manager's recommendation to check out the view of the White House from the Hay Adam's rooftop patio. We got a lovely, piping hot, to-go cup of coffee from the formal dining room and waited a short minute for security to come walk us up to the roof.

They weren't kidding when they said, "View"! As you can see from the pics, we were looking down directly at the front of the White House. A pretty fantastic introduction to DC. The Potomac was in the background and I have to say, I felt a surge of history sweep over me. After taking a dozen or so pictures and talking to the security guard, we gathered our bags up and walked the short block back to the Sofitel. The day was blustery, but the clouds were clearing and it was staring to look like a picture-perfect day for sightseeing.

Our new room checked-into and thouroughly checked-out and compared to the Hay Adams: robes not as good, view much better; we put in calls to Keith and David and got ourselves out the door to have lunch right on the corner at Lou's Deli. A seasoned order-taker with less than a full head of teeth took our tourist-daft (and slightly late-night, sleep-deprived, maybe-had-to-much-to-drink) orders and we sat ourselves down on a sidewalk cafe table in the sun to eat and wait for David to catch up with us.

The sandwiches were delish and David got to us just in time to split mine with me -- David's a bean pole and seemed fine with the half-lunch, while Keith probably could have eaten two more sandwiches and still look like he did in college.

The wind gusting, the leaves blowing everywhere and the sun shining in a gorgeous blue-blue sky, we headed off towards the Mall: first stop, the White House. Or, actually, the ATM at the imposing BofA right before the White House. We spent the rest of the day gushing about the fabo weather, taking pictures, trying to absorb the true meaning of the monuments we were visiting, and generally having a tremendously perfect day. David had to leave us around 3:30 p.m. to get ready for the rehearsal dinner (he was one of the groomsmen) so Keith, Steve and I took in the Korean War Memorial and the Air and Space Museum. Keith grew up in the area, and was a wealth of information about everything we saw.

Keith left us around 5:00 p.m. to go buy a shirt and coat for a formal dinner with a family friend, but would drop in to our hotel room a couple of hours later to iron his new duds and get dressed. In the meantime, I took a nap and Steve indulged in a little nature TV. The two of us, feeling tired but hungry, took ourselves out to a low-key, but delicious Thai meal about 10 blocks from our hotel.

We capped off the night with a cocktail (thoughtfully brought to our room by a returning Keith) and the view from the 7th floor of the Sofitel. Then, deciding we were being old-fogies, walked down the block to a local pub and ordered ourselves some oysters on the half-shell (did I mention, muck like myself, Keith is always hungry?), some fried calamari and another round of drinks. We called it a night around 1:00 a.m., Keith slept on our floor until 2:30 a.m. when he had to go catch a redeye to Phoenix, and Steve and I proceeded to continue with our 2nd day of uber-lazy mode of touring, starting promptly at somewhere around 10:00 a.m.

In case you missed the subtle picture link above, you can see some pictures and some more text by clicking here.

*Editor's Note: the pictures aren't as good as we normally strive to present, but due to some cross-platform/cross-software glitches, things got complicated. Thus, in the interest of getting this done in a timely manner, we posted it as-is. Sorry about that.

Labels: jewelry, photo, travel, vacation, wedding