Will Around the World

Kicked off this Saturday morning the right way: with an 11-mile run. Naomi is training for the New York Marathon and asked me to join her on her weekly long run. We ran through Rock Creek Park and Georgetown. We were by no means the only ones this morning to enjoy the flat trails and fairly mild weather; Washington is a great city for running and biking. At the end of the run Naomi was ready to run two more miles but I was gasping for air.

After lunch in College Park, we returned to Washington in the late afternoon. We visited the National Portrait Gallery and Smithsonian Museum of American Art, which are housed in the same building and open again this summer after a muli-year renovation. I liked the walls of photographs (of faces, monuments and other things) and portraits of 20th-century celebrities, both on the first floor. I also enjoyed the contemporary art exhibit on the third floor, especially a video installation by Nam June Paik. This is a map of America, and each state has a television playing iconic images (example: potatoes for Idaho).

Naomi and I went to U St. for dinner. This is the home of Washington's sizable Ethiopian community and of course the location of many Ethiopian restaurants. We picked Efete on 18th St. This place has a narrow, stylishly decorated dining room; it's suitable for a date or bringing a small group at the beginning of a night on the town.

After dinner we walked down U St. to Chi-Cha Lounge, a place with conversation potential that Naomi discovered online. Along the way we passed another Ethiopian restaurant called Dukem. This one, which was much larger and busier, deserves consideration for my next visit. When we got to Chi-Cha we were disappointed to find that it was closed this weekend. We weren't too far away, though, from Dupont Circle, a nightlife hotspot, and spent the rest of the night at Lucky Bar. This is a raucous joint full of early twenty-somethings. It features decent music (hip-hop, classic soul) and the potential for mingling, although no one danced on this night. Naomi and I met two of her friends there, Megan and Melanie. We all had an enjoyable time.

# posted by billklee @ 11:27