Near Home (Penn Quarter & Chinatown)

Di Yin's fellowship provided housing! They own a bunch of condos in two buildings downtown. The condo they gave us was a decent-sized studio. The walk-in closet was large enough that we easily had enough space for all of our stuff despite it being a studio. The studio came nicely furnished: simple, tasteful furniture, modern appliances (including a dishwasher, washing machine, and dryer), and posters from the National Gallery of Art on the walls. The appliances were designed well. The microwave had the best user interface I've seen. The refrigerator had reconfigurable shelving. The oven racks folded, meaning you can have a rack that extends only halfway across the oven. Although we didn't use this feature, I imagine it can be helpful if you have a tall pot in the oven and want to cook enough other items that you need partial racks. It's just another example of the well-designed appliances. Also, the gas stove was very nice, with strong, even heat (not as strong as the gas stoves in China but better than others I've used in the States).

In contrast to the quality of the appliances within the condo, as we discovered in January, the building's water boiler wasn't powerful enough to keep up with the usage on cold mornings. Showers were lukewarm. This lasted only a week, at which point the weather warmed a bit. Or they fixed it. In either case, it didn't affect our lives much.

I enjoyed that many of Di Yin's coworkers lived in the same building. This made it easy to have dinner parties or simply drop by to say hello.

When I said the apartment was downtown, I meant it. Pennsylvania Avenue is the street that runs from the Capitol to the White House. We were a block off Pennsylvania Avenue, about halfway between those two reference points. Naturally, this part of the city is called the Penn Quarter.

Being downtown had its negatives. A building across the alley from us was under renovation, and the workers started at around 6:30am or 7:00am. I was usually woken by the sound of trucks backing up and dumpsters being emptied. I could hear construction noise the rest of the day, but those early morning noises were the loudest. I don't know why they didn't do the loudest activities at a more reasonable time.

I loved that I could walk to the Mall and its many (free) museums in ten or fifteen minutes. I also loved that I was two blocks from Washington D.C.'s central library. In addition, because we were in the center of the city, we were near multiple metro stations. This meant we could easily catch trains on any line--no need to transfer--and only had to stay on the train for a handful of stations before we got anywhere we wanted to go.

Conveniently, our apartment was located about halfway between Di Yin's work and mine. We each could walk to work in less than fifteen minutes. In rare instances, the walk was exciting. BP has a floor in the same building as my company and in a neighboring building--sometimes there were protests.

I liked how the area near my apartment was well lit at night. Lots of street lamps. Di Yin also said the fact that the FBI building is across the street made her feel safe.

Penn Quarter is mostly a commercial district. In the vicinity are various nice fast-food restaurants such as Cosi, Pret A Manger, Paul's, Potbelly, Qdoba, and Starbucks. There are also various nice chain restaurants: McCormick & Schmick's, Gordon Biersch, Hard Rock Cafe, Ruth's Chris, etc. There are also a bunch of independent restaurants. Of these, we visited Cure Bar & Bistro, located in the grand atrium of a hotel lobby, for a good meal in an impressive, stylish place.

There are various dessert-y places nearby. Crumbs Bake Shop (a chain) makes pastries, especially cupcakes. The variety is incredible. They make about eighty different flavors, though I'd guess from appearances that only about a third of them are available on any given day. Regardless, it's still an enormous selection. Tangysweet sells frozen yogurt. The classic is fairly tart. During one visit the special flavor was banana. The toppings policy is a crowd-pleaser: if you pay for toppings, you get as much as you want of as many types as you want as long as you can fit them in the cup. There was another frozen yogurt place, one which sells by the ounce, that isn't very good. The more-sophisticated Pitango (a local chain) offers gelato & sorbets in lots of intriguing flavors. I was most tempted by the fruity ones: banana, pineapple, white grapefruit, cantaloupe, mojito, quince, and rhubarb, but was also interested in the spicy chocolate, hazelnut, and orange dark chocolate gelatos. Eventually I tried Pitango during the summer heat waves.

The neighborhood known as Chinatown is adjacent to Penn Quarter. It's a few blocks to the east-northeast from our apartment. The neighborhood has nothing to do with China. It's an odd place. There's little Chinese there, but everything that is there has a Chinese name on its sign, including places such as Clyde's (bar & grill) and the Marriott (hotel). One doesn't see Chinese people in Chinatown (but then one doesn't see many in Washington D.C. in general). Instead, I'm told the neighborhood has some of the city's top restaurants, and none of these are Chinese. It's basically a stylish destination; the China connection is mostly historical. Even the big Chinese gate is a recent introduction; it was built in 1986.

I visited the library regularly to pick up books and DVDs. Its collection is large and it's easy to request delivery from other libraries within the D.C. system. I didn't tend to hang around / browse the library much because it was an older building and not particularly welcoming (though not unpleasant) and because the DVDs in particular are so disorganized that I couldn't often find what was supposed to be there. Instead, I just requested the items. The library also has the negative of most major city's central libraries: a large number of homeless people and, about half the time, the smell of pee near the entrance.

Occasionally the library had exhibits in its lobby. It once had an exhibit on Jews in Washington D.C., the first time I heard a discussion of this topic. The exhibit described how the Jewish community evolved over time in Washington D.C. from the first synagogues (which soon became reform) to the influx of eastern European immigrants and the spawning of more orthodox synagogues to the gradual acceptance of Jews in government and politics. I particularly enjoyed seeing Jews alongside African-Americans protesting segregated parks in the 1960s; it felt an appropriate scene to be shown in the Martin Luther King, Jr. Library.

By the way, I took pictures at random times of things I spotted in my neighborhood.