This was the first time we’ve spent much time in the Capitol Hill area of DC… Son’s new home is about 10 blocks from the capitol, and our Airbnb rooms were closer yet.  

Herb salad

For dinner Friday night, we chose Belga Cafe… good choice! To accompany my Corsendonk Brown Ale, I had the herb salad with a garlic waffle and cucumber sorbet, and pumpkin soup with mussels. The others had various mussel-y things including Waterzooi and a variety of good Belgian beers, and someone had a steak. We asked our waitress about the huge jar of yellowish liquid on the bar, and the next thing we knew, we each had a (really cute) little glass of Jenever, very tasty and palate-cleansing… before…. this scrumptious sample platter of Belgian desserts. 

 Saturday morning we met some DC SharePoint friends (JanisHall, CyberSlate, and MRackley) for brunch at Corner Bakery in Union Station (once we all figured out that it was IN the station). Good coffee and geeky conversation 🙂

After that we hit the nearby (and free) Postal Museum

National Postal Museum

(didn’t know there was one of those, did you?), which was really very interesting. We learned that a lot of transportation advances in the US were spearheaded by the postal service, trying to find ways to get people’s mail to them faster and more consistently. Also, many newspapers have the word “Post” or “Dispatch” in them because they were delivered through the US Mail originally. There was a nifty “surface” game where you had to try to get a letter from California to Ohio in the late 1800’s (I think), as quickly and cheaply as possible. I think our route only cost $13,000 or so, and took 23 days…

Now, here’s a really lucky thing: there’s a Capitol City Brewery in the same building! So we had a nice light lunch of hummus & pita with olives, cucumbers & tomatoes. Oh, and some beer. Hub tried the Kölsch, which he said wasn’t really to type, but I liked the Porter.

It had turned into an absolutely beautiful day… sunny and 70’s… so we wandered around Capitol Hill waiting till Son was done with his crisis intervention workshop.

When he was done, he biked to meet us for pizza at We The Pizza on Pennsylvania Ave. House-made ginger soda was SO good…  there were chunks of ginger in it! Then we walked down to Eastern Market to browse the craft stalls – very cool. Also we spent about an hour at Capitol Hill Books and bought – um – a BUNCH of books.

After a little nap and freshening back at our respective houses, we walked to meet Son & his GF at Toscana Cafe, which he had suggested on the basis of their take-out. While we waited on the street corner, we watched several groups stop and look, and decide against it, since it doesn’t look like much. But one couple stopped to tell us that they drive in from Virginia just to come here. Well, I can see why! We had a really excellent dinner… appetizers of perfect calamari & shrimp in a delicious spicy tomato sauce, as well as figs stuffed with fontina and wrapped in pancetta. Dinners were all amazing: pesto gnocchi, lasagna, salmon risotto, and butternut ravioli. And then with the nutella gelato (for the others), the best-prepared espresso we’ve had in a LONG time! Absolutely recommended!

Sunday morning we checked out of our house (which just involved leaving the key on the kitchen table – we hadn’t seen our hostess since Friday afternoon), and drove up to Son’s house. We took a nice early-morning walk around his neighborhood, which is in an area near H St that’s in the middle of being fixed up – very interesting. We met at Sidamo Coffee on H St for delicious muffins and Ethiopian coffee.

I couldn’t resist photographing this sign out the window.

After leaving some of our CSA veggies with Son, we were on our way south to visit Daughter…