The Capitol

One day I visited the Capitol, taking pictures along the way.

I'd arranged a tour. After an introductory video, we walked around the complex. There are many statues around, mostly of presidents. Naturally, the highlight of the tour was the rotunda.

Our tour group peeked in the original Supreme Court chamber. The Supreme Court used this chamber for sixty years, and was housed in the Capitol building for over a hundred years. So much for supposedly temporary quarters.

We also stopped by the crypt room. Originally it was intended that George Washington be buried there in the center of the Capitol. However, it took too long to build the Capitol--by the time it was done, no one wanted to disinter him to move him there.

I learned a decent amount on the tour and liked the rotunda but overall found the tour none too exciting. I was disappointed that we didn't get to see the current House or Senate chambers. Also, I noticed lots of informative signs around. We didn't get to read them because we were shepherded around by our tour guide. I wonder who gets to read them beside legislators and staff. It's too bad, as judging by their number they must have more information than conveyed by the guide.

After the tour I explored the exhibition hall. It has exhibits on the Capitol and its history, as well as on the evolution of policies within the House and Senate. Some of the stories about debates, bills, compromises, amendments, parliamentary activities, investigations, corruption, and power brokering were quite interesting. For instance, the Senate was originally a closed-door body until the state legislatures--who at the time often directed how their senators should vote--protested the lack of visibility and accountability.

I also learned about the jobs of people in the building, and about the short subway connecting the Capitol to its associated office buildings.

In exhibition hall, there are lots of models showing details of parts of the Capitol building, and models of the building at various points in time. These latter models are smart because they also show the the buildings near the Capitol. For instance, one can see when Union Station and the Supreme Court Building showed up.

The exhibitions are well done. Because I read everything, I spent a long time in the exhibition hall.

Memorials and The Mall

I walked and biked across and around The Mall--Washington's long strip of grass from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial--many times. Sometimes it was to play host to visitors; sometimes it was to explore museums; sometimes it was to examine monuments; sometimes it was simply to walk or jog or run. The Mall was an easy destination because I lived so close to it.

I collected the pictures I took in various visits to the Mall. Some visits were short one-offs; others were day-long sight-seeing of memorials. The pictures are in chronological order, which means that often sites near each other are adjacent in the album but sometimes they're not if I visited them on separate days.

Annoyingly, the Mall gradually closed. When I arrived in Washington D.C., the area around the reflecting pool near the Lincoln Memorial was entirely off-limits as it was being rebuilt. After I arrived, as winter approached the Park Service shut more and more grassy segments to do rebuilding or at least replanting over the winter. Though I laud the goals, I want to complain that these construction sites blighted the landscape. February became worse with more construction as building started for the African American Museum. The spring wasn't much better; if anything it was worse, with huge mounds of dirt of being dug up on the eastern half of the Mall in order to rebuild grounds for better drainage and more sustainable lawns.

Washington D.C. Neighborhoods

Here are several short descriptions of my impressions of neighborhoods in or near Washington D.C. Some neighborhoods deserved longer write-ups: Penn Quarter and Chinatown, Dupont Circle, Georgetown, and Old Town Alexandria. Those neighborhoods are not included here. For general impressions of Washington D.C. as a whole, see my overview post.

Adams Morgan
Adams Morgan is quirky and eclectic. The commercial streets have some unusual shops. Residentially, the housing consists of densely packed row houses, mostly all individualized (i.e., different from their neighbors').

Cleveland Park
On a blustery, surprisingly warm (for being post-Thanksgiving) Sunday, I found myself wandering around Cleveland Park. It's an upscale neighborhood, perhaps even more so than Dupont Circle. Both these neighborhoods have embassies, but Cleveland Park consists of nice single-family homes and a relatively smaller number of apartment buildings whereas Dupont Circle is mostly townhouses. This means the majority of buildings in Cleveland Park are larger and more expensive. That said, Cleveland Park's commercial area isn't anything like Dupont Circle's.

Indeed, many months later, I had a reason to further explore Cleveland Park's commercial strip. I found it's a charming neighborhood center, several blocks long, filled with single-story, densely packed shops. Some of the charm comes from its older feel, including for instance an old-fashioned movie theater. The commercial area has everything you'd want; as such, it could be a small town's downtown. But, it actually has too much stuff for a small town--its density and variety could only be supported by having the density of a city around it.

After writing this section, I read more about Cleveland Park. I agree with its tagline: "A small town in the city." It has the feel of a small town center yet is more than a small town center.

U Street
U Street is an up-and-coming neighborhood. I understand it's been up-and-coming for a decade or two now. It seems a bit stagnant; there's no obvious new developments. It's fairly hip, at least judging by the restaurants, but it could use more, or at least more shops. There are occasional gloomy, closed buildings.

Di Yin and I liked the look of an modern apartment building nearby and its many big plate glass windows.

Further away from the main commercial section, U Street is edgy. For instance, off the eastern end (near the Shaw metro station), all businesses have bars in their windows. This area has lots of African stuff. For instance, one short block had three African (including Ethiopian) restaurants. I heard lots of a language I didn't recognize. There are also lots of fences in this neighborhood for construction/repair zones. We were in that east end for dinner (Ethiopian, naturally), but it's not really a destination. U Street itself is a destination for some people however, though not for us. Over the course of the year we didn't find ourselves there very often.

Columbia Heights
I stopped by this neighborhood twice, only briefly for pizzas. It seems like a nice, modern, yuppie neighborhood, with many upper-middle-class chain restaurants and big-box chain stores. Everything looks new. It reminded me of Clarendon except this neighborhood is built up. Around the metro station are high-rise residential buildings with commercial establishments in the first story. Meanwhile, Clarendon is relatively flat, with few buildings more than a couple of stories.

On my second trip (for pizza at a different place), we left the town center. The older residential section was mostly well-kept-up townhouses with deep, attractive front gardens. We found neighborhood restaurants and bars on some corners. They felt like community places. I could live in this area.

Indeed, the town felt like an integrated community. We saw evidence that whites, blacks, and hispanics all lived in the area (walking dogs, carrying groceries, etc.). Di Yin guessed that the white people are newer folk, gentrifying the neighborhood, and the big name retailers are coming with them.

H Street
H Street NE is a neighborhood we kept hearing about, the new up-and-coming neighborhood replacing U Street. On various bus and driving trips that passed through this area, we saw fast food joints and an intriguing restaurant or two but not much of anything overall. We weren't impressed.

It was only near the end of our stay in D.C. that we made it there in person, for a Japanese (ramen) restaurant. By this point, I had tips from various people for half a dozen restaurants in this neighborhood. We walked the eight or so blocks of the main commercial strip eying stores. It definitely seems like a hipster destination, certainly more so than U Street. It's funkier. I felt more comfortable on H Street than U Street. (Don't take that to mean I'm claiming to be a hipster.) I think it's that H Street shops tend to sell food or items that people became interested in over the last five years whereas U Street shops moved in years earlier and thus tend to be for things that interest me less at the moment.

The Mall
When friends visited, we'd take them on strolls around the Mall, sometimes at night. I wrote more about the Mall in a different post.

Southeast
Not everything one hears generalizing about good and bad neighborhoods is true. For instance, one day I walked from the Capitol through SE D.C. to the Navy Yard / waterfront. (Some guides warn visitors against traveling outside NW D.C., saying the other sides are unsafe. For what it's worth, all the neighborhoods in D.C. listed above are in NW.) The southeast is a perfectly nice area. I first passed townhouses then, across the highway, perfectly respectable apartment buildings. Many people I saw wore suits and/or government badges. I spent another half an hour walking in SE circumnavigating the Navy Yard, and thought the neighborhood was fine.

Crystal City, Arlington (VA)
Crystal City is a neat place. We went to a restaurant there for dinner one evening and were impressed by the area's extensive underground malls and tunnels. Stretching more than half a mile in length, these passageways connect numerous apartment buildings, hotels, and office buildings with about two hundred shops (including several dozen restaurants covering a breadth of price points and cuisines), a metro station, and even a theater. One could get anything one needs without going outside, a great boon in cold weather. A bonus: the mall's/tunnel's walls were decorated with a huge photography exhibit. It was fun to gawk and walk. I'm led to believe that there's usually some sort of exhibit on display.

Clarendon, Arlington (VA)
I liked the feel of Clarendon on my first visit there years earlier and I still liked it on my first trip this year. It's a nice, walkable neighborhood center, filled with many shops, restaurants, and grocery stores. The architecture and especially the store selection reminded me more of California than another neighborhood in the Washington D.C. metro area. The Pinkberry shop perhaps drove that comment, but the area also has both Trader Joe's and Whole Foods, two stores one doesn't tend to see close together except in California.

Eden Center, Falls Church (VA)
One day when we had a car, Di Yin and I stopped by Eden Center in Falls Church. Like San Jose's Little Saigon, it's the Vietnamese center of the metro region. In a couple small indoor malls and large strip malls, Eden Center has dozens of restaurants, cafes, bakeries, and bars. It's a panoply of Vietnamese dining. It's clear the landlord doesn't enforce any variety in types of shops; there are many places competing with identical business models. Besides these restaurants, there are many jewelry shops, a few salons, a grocery store, and a handful of other types of shops.

Interestingly, the parking lot flies the American flag and the flag that South Vietnam flew before the Vietnamese war (and lost to the communists).

Alexandria (VA)
I wrote about my impressions of Old Town Alexandria in another post. During another visit, this time in the evening between Thanksgiving and Christmas, we observed Old Town's main street was nicely decorated for the holidays with lights in every tree.

One day Di Yin and I met a friend with a car (E) for lunch in Del Ray. Del Ray was a town near Alexandria built mainly in 1895-1930. Annexed by the town of Alexandria, Del Ray is now considered a historic neighborhood within it. Although we didn't walk around Del Ray, I feel I got a good impression of the neighborhood from our drive through it.

Del Ray is a nice middle-/upper-middle- class town. Along Mount Vernon, the main street, are a selection of quirky, fun shops and restaurants. The coolest thing about the street, however, is its architecture. The stores are either in row-shops, small stand-alone buildings, or converted single-family houses. It's a nice medley of styles, and all have a built-a-while-ago historic feel (though all are well-maintained). Not as densely packed as a modern urban street, nor with large-scale shops like modern suburban streets, it feels like an old-fashioned main street. Meanwhile, the residential areas nearby are similarly low-scale, with small-ish, old-ish single-family houses and townhouses.

Bethesda (MD)
Bethesda's town center is large. I biked through the town on multiple occasions and took the metro there on other occasions (mostly to eat) and rarely went down the same street twice. On every trip, I discovered new streets with blocks of restaurants and shops. At every time of day, there were always people on the streets. Maybe not as many people as in Georgetown, but it was always happening. One evening we found a professional band performing in a square.

The buildings are relatively tall in this vicinity, many a dozen stories. They look residential. I'd guess Bethesda has a higher population density than the area around most other metro stations.

The whole area feels new/modern and clean. It's definitely one of the nicer suburban destinations compared to others around D.C. and around most other cities.

Rockville (MD)
I twice made the trek to Rockville for Chinese food. (It has a large Chinese population.) Rockville is definitely suburban. I visited its town center, which seems like a smaller version of Reston's town center, including the central plaza / performance area and nearby library. The analogy to Reston's town center stretches further, as the roads around Rockville's town center are likewise large, high-speed roads, sometimes traffic-clogged. Outside the town center, it's not a town meant for walking.

Georgetown

One Friday (?) evening we visited Georgetown. It was hopping! The streets were crowded with people out for a night on the town. Window-shopping was a common activity--Georgetown has many upscale shops. We enjoyed the atmosphere and the look of the place: the brownstone buildings and the nearby canals with some nice bridges. I saw these bridges more when biking during the daytime but thought they looked better at night. We only walked through part of Georgetown. It's much more expansive than Palo Alto, though both have the same type of restaurants and shops and feel of fanciness.

Incidentally, we passed an Apple Store where people left statements and tokens of affection in memory of Steve Jobs.

When we left, we said we should hang out in this neighborhood more. It took us another month or two to return, and on that trip we didn't spend much more time in Georgetown. When we headed home from our second trip, we again said we should hang out in this neighborhood more. :)

A month later, we made it again, this time during the daytime. We walked along the main street and, unlike the previous times, also along the canal. I took pictures (though oddly none of the main street--I need another trip...).

On another trip, my camera was acting up so I didn't take pictures. This time I noticed that Georgetown, besides having high-end shops such as clothing boutiques, also has many stores in the Restoration-Hardware vein.

In all, we made many trips to Georgetown. I never ended up with additional pictures. Perhaps the most recent memorable trip involved a multi-hour walk on a hot day, first along Q Street through the residential section, then through downtown, along the commercial M Street, then across and west along the canal, then across the bridge to Rosslyn and back, then back along the M Street with a zig down to the waterfront for a stroll along it, then back up to a commercial section near/across the canal, and finally back to M Street. (We had a guest who wanted to see the town, so see it we did.)

White House Farmers Market

One day while on an outing around lunchtime midweek I stumbled upon the White House Farmers Market. It was quite a change compared with my two regular markets (Penn Quarter and Dupont Circle). The market's medium-sized, a bit bigger than Penn Quarter's. The mix of stands was different than both those markets: half of it was cooked food. I spotted some great looking fish patties and glazed pumpkin cookies. Too bad I didn't have time to try anything, and too bad I discovered this only near the end of my time in D.C. so couldn't return another time.

Eastern Market

Di Yin and I saw Eastern Market in pieces over multiple days: Saturday, November 19, 2011, Sunday, January 1, 2012, and Saturday, January 28, 2012. I took pictures on these visits. Di Yin took a few pictures on one visit. The latter link goes to her first picture of the market (picture #28 in the album). When you see a picture of a balloon caught in a tree (picture #37), you're done with her pictures from Eastern Market. I'll link to her other pictures in that album in other posts.

The market complex has a long farmers market aisle outside. All vegetables have multiple producers selling them. Although some prices at some stands are not reasonable, you can find reasonable prices for any item if you look around. If you do so it's certainly cheaper than my local Penn Quarter market.

Another aisle or two outside has artsy things, fairly decent stuff. There's also a section for jewelry.

Inside has tons of butchers, selling meat of any cut and style from virtually any animal. I saw bison steaks, rabbit, duck sausages, boar sausages, and much, much more. There's also a large fish vendor, a decent-sized cheese shop, a few vegetables stands, a bakery or two, and a place with an astoundingly long line, Market Lunch, that serves breakfast, brunch, and lunch.

Across the street is a flea market, and not a trashy one.

It's a destination area. Hence naturally there are lots of cafes and boutiques in the area.

We didn't often go to Eastern Market; it was a bit too much trouble compared with buying our foodstuffs at grocery stores and our local markets.

Maine Avenue Fish Market

One day when three friends (B, C, and E) were in town, we followed a tip to explore the Maine Avenue Fish Market. It's a bit more than a mile walk from my apartment down to its location on the waterfront.

The fish market is outside. I took pictures. Di Yin did many more. The market is apparently one of the last remaining open-air seafood markets on the east coast, and one of the oldest such markets in the United States.

We ate lunch there. I tried the fried red snapper special, a huge chunk of fish (with bones) served on white bread. It was decent but plain. I was given every possible topping: tartar sauce, tabasco sauce, cocktail sauce, and ketchup. It came with a sub-par coleslaw of finely diced cabbage in mayo.

The highlight of my meal was hush puppies, deep-fried balls of corn meal. Those brought me back to my childhood.

I also tried some items my friends bought including large raw oysters (good) and ceviche (bleh, not really ceviche or sashimi for that matter).

For cooking later, we bought flounder (which Di Yin steamed Chinese style) which we discovered wasn't as good as sole cooked in a similar fashion, mackerel (broiled Japanese style) which we declared good and put on our regular rotation*, and sardines (broiled, already on our regular rotation). In later visits, we bought more seafood including squid and more mackerel.

I find it interesting that the prices for all the fish are the same between different sections/wings of the market. It's not clear to me whether all these sections are the same vendor. I'd be surprised if they are because then the displays would be rather redundant.

The fish market provides inexpensive cleaning/gutting. Given the ambiance, it's exactly what you'd expect: men in a small room with big knifes, big counters, big sinks, nozzles for spraying down all surfaces, and buckets for unusable parts. No pictures allowed.

Over the next year, we revisited the fish market multiple times, Di Yin many more than I. We often got shrimp or squid. Sometimes we bought fish. Two of those times we decided to clean and gut the fish ourselves. We learned it's pretty easy and fast if you're willing to make a mess and have scales fly everywhere. Once we bought live Maryland blue crabs, which Di Yin cooked Singapore-chili-crab style. Gosh, crabs are a pain to eat. They're also a pain to kill. I tried to many techniques, all too gruesome to describe here.

* at some point we removed most species of mackerel from our regular rotation due to their high levels of mercury

Dupont Circle and its Farmers Market

On my first weekend in D.C., Di Yin and I met some friends to visit Dupont Circle's farmers market and to eat brunch. Dupont Circle, as I reported on a visit years before, is a nice neighborhood with a ton of embassies and well maintained townhouses, many with lovely gardens out front. Though some embassies are handsome, some (Sudan, Togo, others) on Embassy Row (Massachusetts Avenue near Dupont Circle) are modest places, normal townhouses fifteen feet wide.

Dupont Circle's regular residences are nice. They're all different. They have character. I could make wandering the streets a habit and I'd never get bored. I never took pictures in this neighborhood because I knew that if I took one I'd want to take another on the next block and another on the next and it wouldn't stop.

Dupont Circle's farmers market is big and first-rate, beautiful and colorful with lots of flowers and vegetables. It's respectable compared to those in California. Indeed, it has much more pasture-raised meat than I've seen at a market in California.

I tried a "tsu li" and "ya li", two types of Chinese pears that I haven't seen before. Interestingly, the farmer says they keep for ten months! The spottier one was sourer. I prefer the cleaner. Di Yin also prefers the cleaner; she says it's crisper.

I returned to the farmers market during the winter when my local one was closed (the Dupont Circle farmers market is year-round) and often during the spring simply because its selection was so large. During one time I visited it was snowing, admittedly with very light, sporadic snowflakes, but snowing the nonetheless. My fingers were so cold--I wore thin gloves--that I was worried they might go numb.

Our most common purchase was various leafy greens: collards, kales, etc. We found these in abundance in various varieties, often organic.

At times I grabbed breakfast from the main bakery at the market. The mixed fruit scones I got were always quite good (and I say this though I'm usually indifferent to scones), as was its ginger scone. The muffins were less exciting: the fig muffin didn't taste much like fig, and the raspberry-almond muffin was a bit weird because the raspberry came in the form of a jam baked into the muffin. Regardless, I liked how its selection of breakfast pastries changed often; one never knew what was going to be on offer.

There was another bakery serving French pastries (breakfast and dessert ones) as well as savory French baked goods (quiches, etc.).

Over time, I also started appreciating the flower stands, which sold single stems at reasonable prices, and the bison stand, which sold every imaginable cut. I bought and cooked bison several times. I also began regularly bringing a single flower stem home to brighten up our studio.

The main thing I missed at the market compared to California is that the fruit-growing season starts later and is shorter in this area. Berries, peaches, melons and the like were rare.