Playing Tourist.

Things suddenly turned busy as I bid farewell to Bangladesh and began the long process of catching up on everything I had put on the back burner over the last few weeks. But life is good as DC tries desperately to welcome in the autumn, though it seems to fall off the bandwagon occasionally - slipping back into warm summery temperatures. The trees are a little confused, but hopefully this weekend I can get some shots of the foliage starting to change.

So lets backtrack...

This one goes way back to an adventure to Sticky Fingers in Columbia Heights. It's a vegan bakery that is out of this world. My chocolate cupcake definitely trumped Keith's sticky bun, but both were pretty delicious.

One of my favorite things to do with a little free time is to walk around this great city. A recent stint of tour director made me realize that all of the wandering around over the past 10 months has really paid off, but there's always more to learn. Before shipping off to monsoon country, Keith was also eager to take in some of Washington's best, so Friday we did a little more touring of some of the Mall and monuments. I have to credit Keith with a lot of the DC images below. Luckily internet isn't a part of the daily routine in Dhaka, so he won't see this...but I have to sheepishly admit that his Cannon takes some pretty great shots. Though my Nikon stays truer to the color that is actually there, the Cannon does some correction that results in pretty outstanding color saturation.

We had breakfast at Eastern Market - a bacon, egg, and cheese on a freshly made roll...pretty incredible! No documentation of that, but here is an adorable home-front in Eastern Market from that day. Keith spotted the green door and I had to get in on the action.

Then we walked along the Mall. Past the Washington Monument and over to the WWII Memorial.

We submitted to the cheesy tourist shots...
just because.
Then headed towards the Lincoln Memorial, one of the few that I had not revisited since moving here.
The ceiling of the Memorial is quite spectacular: the panels are Alabama marble and beeswax surrounded by copper alloy. The columns, Indiana limestone.

It was a bit crowded, but we could find a spot on the North side that was nice and quiet.
We continued walking westward, and ended on the steps next to the Arlington memorial bridge looking over the Potomac.
Camera battle. Don't tell anyone, but his camera totally won. Damnit.

I'll blame the lighting. The sun was totally behind him. :(
On to Chinatown to try some "authentic" Chinese cuisine. It was neither authentic nor tasty, but something I guess you've got to try once.

Saturday night was time to head to Dulles. As Nikki compared Keith to El Nino - blowing into town every two years, we bid farewell. He doesn't seem to have much internet access except one computer at the VSO office, so I can't imagine he'll update it much, but you can read about some of the adventures in Dhaka via Floating Planet.

The whole affair was over quickly, so I headed out to Greenbelt for a little reunion with some folks from my summer class. Michael made his delicious rum cake (it's quite incredible)

With Martha Stewart skills that extended beyond the oven, he busted out this little handheld device that frothed the cream for my caffeine beverage (for my sleepy and trying-not-to-be-heartbroken self)



In other news... This weekend also brought the Priest family to town; but I have to gather more pictures from various cameras before posting about our adventures this week. My classes are going really well - I'm amazed at how interesting Color Theory is and how it is already changing the way I'm looking at things. I'm starting an internship soon, but more details on that once I get into it. Check out Sean at X this weekend! More apple picking this weekend, so I'm in search for more apple recipes.