Yes. Well.
It all started in late May when I got a message from my cousin Sophie, who lives overseas. Essentially it said SURPRISE I'M COMING TO VISIT to which the appropriate reaction is
YESSSSSSSSSSSSS
I see my cousins so rarely that the chance to spend any time with them causes me to flip out in joy. Such was the case here. Sophie was set to come in on the 1st of July and stay through 4th of July weekend here in DC. The only problem was that I had just landed a job, but we figured we'd work around that. Our family has experience working on very little plans and scheduling that playing it by ear comes naturally, if a bit stressfully.
I should not be this excited after 4 years living in DC, but I really like being a tourist. I think it's wicked fun - you get to wander around and look at whatever you feel like seeing and take a shit ton of pictures you might glance through later. Also the perfect time to play DC TOURIST BINGO!!!!!
Anyway. The week before Sophie was set to arrive, I got another message. Turns out a friend of hers offered to give her a ride down instead of heading back north to catch a flight to DC, so she'd be arriving a few days earlier.
And so our week of adventuring in our nation's capitol began.
In which the actual adventuring kinda resembled this:
First up is obvious. The monuments at night. That is ALWAYS the first step, as everyone gets in during the day and then what do you do with your evening? Sit around and have a leisurely catch-up? HELL NO! You can do that on the metro as you head down to the Mall. So we start with the monuments.
During the week, I went off to work as usual. Sophie would metro down with me and head out to the museum of the day. After work, we would meet up for food and exploring and to see what she'd sketched that day.
On that Friday, I had the day off of work (Fourth of July observed, thank you!). To celebrate, we went to the Spy Museum. I'm not a museum person, but I love this place. There are things to look at, reproductions of actual things used to spy on people (or kill them), and I'm pretty sure the temporary James Bond exhibit has become permanent. We even went crawling up in the ducts they have for small children to see if we could make it across without tripping the sound levels.
Now of course, this was Fourth of July weekend, which means there was copious amounts of flags and freedom everywhere.
Gratuitous amounts. Overwhelming amounts
For the Fourth, we met up with my friend Claire and trooped down to Pennsylvania Ave for the parade. And by trooped, I mean wilted. It was cool up by my apartment, but by the time we got outta the metro at Metro Center, Sophie and I were melting into a little puddle of sadness and broken dreams. Claire, curse her, was perfectly fine. We watched maybe half the parade with its floats and marching bands before we decided that the heat was far too much and retreated to a nearby coffee shop for something cold to drink.
We split ways after that and went back to my apartment to take a nap. When it started getting to be dinnertime, we scooped up my roommate and metro'd off to the Library of Congress to meet up with Claire. That was my brilliant idea. The fireworks would be shot off from the Mall, but I figured there'd be less people at the Library of Congress and we'd still have a decent view. Plus we'd actually have a seat on the red line coming back.
So the four of us met back up, and had a picnic on the steps of the Library of Congress. There were cheese and crackers, pepperoni and sausage, carrots and hummus, coke and chocolate chip cookies. More friends joined up with us as the evening went on. It was a fun gathering of random people in my life. And, of course, we could see the fireworks by the Washington Monument, over the side of the Capitol building. It was perfect.
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