DC, days 5, 6, 7, 8

Day 5: As expected, a lot of lounging about. Coffee, pancakes, New York Times on the porch in the morning, followed by a few hours spent with the NYT Sunday crossword (> 80% done), followed by a helluva lot of loafing on the couch knitting and watching bad TV. Dinner was at a local dive bar, where they make a decent taco salad. More TV and sloth-being afterwards.

Day 6: Busy day. Smithsonian Castle, Natural History Museum, Freer Gallery, Sackler Gallery, African Art Museum, lunch at Les Halles{.broken_link}, Air and Space Museum plus a couple of IMAX movies, then home. Decent sushi for dinner at Tokyo in Quantico.

Day 7: After the usual morning routine of coffee on the porch while watching the Marines run by, Tom and I headed to DC and split a room at the Sofitel in Lafayette Square (which is really a lot closer to McPherson Square, but whatever). Then we wandered over to the Holocaust Memorial. After that it was towards the Eastern Market area for lunch at Belga Cafe. A walk through the market (which was mostly closed) then some time spent sitting on a patio with coffee and dessert. We then wandered down to the Library of Congress and gave it a quick look before giving the American Indian Museum a visit. By that time we were beat and suffering from serious food coma, so we returned for the hotel. He napped, I watched crappy TV and researched where to have dinner. We ended up at TenPenh for dinner and Central for cheese plate and dessert. The chef of Central, Michel Richard, was the 2007 Beard Award winner for Outstanding Chef. Then back to the hotel to sleep off all the food.

Day 8: Breakfast at the hotel. Then the mass transit fun began. Metro to bus to plane to Vegas to plane to Burbank to Oakland to bus to 1.25 mile walk back to my place. That took from 8am Eastern to about 9:30pm Pacific. I was home for about 15 minutes before I was in bed, curled up with the geriatric feline.