Our trip to DC was a little strange due to Superstorm Sandy. Fortunately, the storm held off through the marathon, but that night, the weather started to deteriorate. I was hoping to spend time with some friends who were also in town for the marathon, but they decided to head back up the coast. After soaking my aching legs in a long hot bath, I was ready for some food and drink, and we scored a last minute reservation at Jaleo. And I wore my medal because I earned that thing.
Joe enjoyed some sangria, and I had a few glasses of a Grenacha while we tried to re-book our cancelled flights from our phones. Ever since our honeymoon, Joe has been in search of paella that can live up to the honeymoon paella, and this seemed as good of a place as any. First though, we started with a few tapas. The housemade chorizo with olive oil mashed potatoes was particularly remarkable, and our waiter talked us into the liquid olives – my first experience with molecular gastronomy.
The paella was also incredible but not as photogenic, and we ended up with a lot of food. I heard the couple next to us make a snide remark about the pictures I was taking, but I didn’t care. After running 26.2 miles, I couldn’t exactly say no to dessert either.
Everything that we had was so inventive and beautifully presented. On our way out the door, we stopped to chat with another woman who was wearing her medal, and we heard the hostess calling people with reservations for the next day to cancel them. It was raining pretty hard on our walk back to the hotel, so we stopped off for some Goose Island Matilda on draft.
The next day we were rained in. Everything was closed, the Metro was shut down, and we had to resort to hotel food. While it was a bummer that we were kind of stuck, I was very thankful for the hotel staff. We had a reservation for Rasika Monday night, but it was cancelled. Fortunately, I was able to make another reservation for the next night.
Tuesday was still kind of rainy and icky, though there didn’t appear to be any serious damage near us, and all of the Smithsonian museums were still closed. We found a diner that was open and figured out that the International Spy Museum was the only museum in town open, which was fine by me because I love espionage. While we were walking around, I went to visit Scully and Mulder.
The spy museum was really fun and not somewhere that would’ve been our first choice normally. We walked around the National Mall and visited our buddy Abe.
The weird part about running Marine Corps Marathon is that I was totally oblivious to the landmarks we were near, in part because I was trying to not run into everyone around me and partially due to my glycogen-depleted brain. So it was nice to see everything when I wasn’t surrounded by people. For example, I had NO idea that the Capitol building was behind me in this picture.
Anyway, we walked up through Foggy Bottom and met my friend for a few drinks before heading to Rasika, where we decided to go big or go home: 6-course Chef’s Tasting Menu with wine pairings. It was really dark, so I didn’t get many pictures, but the black cod, palak chaat, and Konkani scallops were amazing. It was the most incredible Indian food I’ve ever had. We were SO full walking back to our hotel. I couldn’t even finish my dessert sampler.
Hopefully, the next time we go back to Washington, there won’t be a Superstorm since I didn’t get to see a quarter of what I wanted to, though we still had a good time.
