The Time We Went To Washington DC But It Was Closed

Months and months ago, we were invited to the wedding of Devin's lifelong best friend. As if this wasn't exciting enough, it was also going to be held in Washington, DC, a city neither one of us has ever had a chance to explore.

"Let's make a vacation of it!" we said.
"Let's stay for a long weekend and do some sightseeing!" we said.

Flights were booked, plans were made. Devin's mother was set to join us and supervise Oscar so we could partay. Then, two weeks before our scheduled departure, the government shut down for reasons I never took the time to completely understand.

"It'll all be cleared up by the time we get there," we said.

But it wasn't. And our long weekend of touristing was whittled down to a long morning spent looking at the outsides of important buildings.

Oscar doing his Uncle Sam impression

The cool side effect of the shut down was that the whole scene was almost totally devoid of human life. "It's like being on Earth the day after," Devin's mom commented as we came up to street level from the metro station.


 Of course this probably had something to do with bad weather, a tourist off-season and it being the weekend. But it still felt delightfully eerie. 

And speaking of the bright side, the rest of the city is filled with nice people and good stuff. Georgetown is completely charming. We went to several chic hotels for cocktails, and each one was tasteful and not overcrowded. We even lucked out and scored a bartender on his last night of work, just dying to give away free glasses of champagne.



The public transportation was clean and easy to navigate. And there's a bus called The Circulator that's only $1.00 and hits some major hubs.


Our hotel was actually just over the river (well, over a river... there are several in the area and I don't know which is which) in Rosslyn, VA. It was a peculiar little urban pocket of mostly office buildings and newer apartment structures.

The view from our hotel

 There were plenty of shops and eateries for us to walk to, but the real find was the fire station holding an open house on Saturday afternoon.



And, right behind the fire station, a playground.

The gray and gloomy weather also helped win me over. I've noticed that I tend to fall in love with a city if it rains the first time I visit. While the natives run for cover, I move slowly from door to door, relishing the rainfall. Everything feels magical, every experience is like a discovery. And usually by the end of my stay, I announce, "I could live here."

I guess it was maybe a good thing capital hill touristing was a bust. Think of all the time we would've wasted being shushed in marble corridors instead of taking in, and falling in love with, the rest of this wonderful city.