Tapas

Hello there. It's Tuesday morning, in recovery mode from a long but fun weekend.

Friday afternoon my brother Greg, and cousins Carol and Sharon flew into DC. I worked all day, but apparently they played a lot of frisbee while I was at work. I'm told that Carol is a maniac during the game 500 and that Sharon gets a little intense when playing Ultimate Frisbee : )

That evening we drove into Arlington and ate at the Aegean Tavern. Carol had her first experience into Greek food, a lamb pita. Sharon's last experience with Greek food was a grilled cheese pita (ahem, I'm not sure how Greek that is), but this time she tried a pita with meat on it. Greg had a lamb shank cooked in a red Greek sauce with orzo pasta. Delicious. Nate and I shared a Greek salad and some sort of entree that was almost like baklava except stuffed with lamb and veggies instead of honey and nuts!

After dinner we drove downtown and spent the evening visiting the Lincoln Memorial, Korean War, Vietnam War, and finally the WWII memorial. They are all very cool to see at night. Later on we picked up our friend Dale who flew in from North Carolina for the rest of the weekend.

The next day we woke up very late (ahhhh how I love to sleep in) and headed back downtown for some more DC fun. Sharon, Greg, Carol, and Dale went to the Holocaust museum. Nate and I had already been there, so we checked out the African Art Museum and then snuck into the Natural History museum to take a peek at the Hope Diamond. It's sooo pretty! Small funny story about it. Apparently at one time the owner of the diamond was French. The diamond was stolen from him. According to French law, a statute of limitations was in effect that after so many years (let's say 5 years) the diamond would be owned by whomever has it in possession. Basically the French couldn't prosecute the thief anymore. I guess that the day after the statute of limitations ran out, someone ran an ad for a beautiful blue diamond (the Hope Diamond) in England. The English king ended up with it I believe. Hmmmmm... suspicious!!

Random strike of luck. At about 4:30 Nate ran up to the Washington Monument and asked if there were any tickets left to go up it. The lady said, "are you crazy, the tickets run out at 8:30am". But then she asked how many were in his party, Nate told her, and then she let Nate and I go up even though we didn't have a ticket! Yeah! You could see all of DC from the top, it was really beautiful.

We left DC, and headed out for Arlington Cemetery. Unfortunately it was closed, so we hoofed it over to Iwo Jima, then walked to a metro stop and went home. I had a roast in the crockpot and Greg made some salisbury steak. Carol made mashed potatoes, Sharon made deviled eggs... mmmmmmm mmmmm good!

On Sunday we all went to our respective churches and then reconvened. We drove out to Great Falls National Park and did a long hike on the Billy Goat trail. Afterwards we went to dinner at Jaleo, a Spanish restaurant in Bethesda, MD. Greg, Sharon and Carol had their first taste of Tapas! Tapas are little Spanish appetizers. You basically keep ordering rounds of them until you get full---everyone shares. We had a rule that you had to order at least one thing totally out of your comfort zone. Carol ordered tuna sushi, Sharon ordered a little scallop dish, Greg ordered shark, Nate ordered some sort of onion, and I got fish soup. We all enjoyed at least most of it. Well, maybe Sharon only enjoyed a few things, but oh well! We got ice cream for dessert and were all full by the end of the night.

All in all it was a great weekend. It was fun to hang out with friends and family. I think I am getting the DC tour guide thing under control. We're ready for whoever wants to visit!