Le Weekend Canadianne!

Visiting the Obamas

My first two Canadian visitors! Yay! :-) of course I stayed with them in their hotel, rather than them staying with me. Full weekend where I tried to play tour guide and not get us horribly lost in a city where I'm still finding my feet. (stupid diagonal streets...)

It's funny because it didn't feel unusual that they were here at all - we were just hanging out at a restaurant having some drinks. It was all completely normal. My two besties and me hangin' out. (It's so weird that I live here.)

I wish I'd taken my lap top to the hotel and could have commented on the fly (my iTouch was not really cooperating with the hotel WiFi) because now it's all a blur. We did Georgetown and Eastern Market and some monuments and some sculpture and shopping. A little jazz at the Kennedy Center to show the place off a bit. Food and drink was the full range from DC Coast which was named DC's "best seafood restaurant" (and it was really good - not that I had seafood mind you, but really unbelievably good kale of all things) to finally going to Ben's Chili Bowl, the DC institution loved by Bill Cosby. We sat at the counter and ate chili half smokes (again not me!) and veggie chili fries (me) and watched the complete crazy-calm as they served dozens and dozens of people - they just kept streaming in.

This was just before the crowning evening of the weekend at the Elliott Brood concert. There was a lot of Canadian in our weekend as we also went to the Edward Burtynsky photography exhibit Oil at the Corcoran Gallery (fantastic - a real hi-light for me I have to say).

Elliott Brood is a Toronto band who is a favorite of ours. I think I've seen them 10 times or so in concert. It was amazing seeing them in this tiny dive bar on a dive street in NW DC with only a handful of others who knew their music. And I know I'm a big loser for being so excited by this but I admit it freely, a truly memorable moment for me of my whole time here is that we spoke to one of them after the show. Never could have done that in Toronto now they are playing to 2000+. So yes, call me a crazy groupie or whatever but it made me giddy.

A lovely full weekend :-) I'm sure I'll have more on it as this week goes on...