bluegrass to lonestar

I took two weeks off for Christmas. I stopped in Nashville first. The plan was to get a bike. That didn’t happen. I did get to see Lauren’s family and eat good sandwiches. My stepdad came to take drive me back to Louisville. We met him at Fat Mo’s for burgers. I’ve been trying as many burgers as I can from the book, “Hamburger America”. So far, it’s mostly been a let down.

I can’t help but smile when I see the Louisville skyline. It was nice to be back. The new basketball arena is huge. I immediately met up with friends. I got to tour the new New Albanian brewery. The new place is really nice, their beers are back to being great and it’s a complete shock (albeit a pleasant one) that it’s doing well. After the tour I had some Saturnalia pints at Sportstime and ended up passed out on a futon. Just like old times.

Christmas with the family was typical. Always enjoyable and a bit annoying. Because I had to fly back to Austin, I received lots of gift cards. The day after Christmas was filled with friends, tacos, and beer. I managed to hit up La Rosita for both lunch and dinner. It’s still the best taco I’ve ever had. Another visit to the Bank Street Brewhouse and card games rounded out the evening.

I went to Cherokee park for a 7-mile run on Sunday followed by a trip to Freedom Hall for a Cards game. The new arena opens next year, so it was nice to be able to see one last game in the place I’ve frequented for so many years. Lauren came up after the game and we went to dinner at La Rosita (yes again) with our Friends from South Bend.

Monday I went to my sister’s workplace to have my hip x-rayed for free. It’s been giving me pain ever since my marathon and my Dad has arthritis in his so I was starting to worry. The doc told me that I had a stress fracture and that I needed to take 4-6 weeks off or it would be disastrous. Not the news I wanted but at least it’s something that can heal.

The rest of the week was fairly uneventful, a trip to cool new bike shop on bardstown and dinner at Shiraz and Sportstime were the main highlights. We managed to fit in one final lunch at La Rosita before we parted for Chicago.

We had to get up early on Sunday, because we had tickets to visit Ford’s Theatre.  After waiting in line with a bunch of middle school kids, from Texas no less, we were ushered inside for a view of the infamous balcony and a lecture from a park ranger.  The lecture was pretty interesting, but the theatre is just a replica built on the same spot.  Had I known this I would have stayed in bed.  Thoroughly touristed out, we decided to take it easy the rest of the day.

We met our friend at the Dupont Circle farmer’s market for some breakfast and grazing.  We split an amazing chocolate almond croissant from one of the vendors.  Lots of free samples of gazpacho, cheese, milk and fruit were sprinkled throughout, including fresh yogurt.  This farmer’s market puts the Austin’s to shame.

Our next stop was the Tune Inn for a cheeseburger.  On the way we encountered Michael Shannon pushing a stroller.  Bizarre celebrity sighting.  Tune Inn is a charming dive bar on Pennsylvania Ave on Capitol Hill.  Taxidermy covers the walls and old men hunch over beers at the bar.  I had just read Hamburger America which lists Tune Inn’s burger as one of the 100 best in America.  I don’t know what burger that guy ate, but it wasn’t the one we were served.  Ours was decent bar food, but would never make any best of list.

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We got up Saturday morning to go to Eastern Market.  It’s a large indoor/outdoor market that offers farmer’s market type goods.  It suffered a fire a few years ago and this was the DC institution’s re-opening weekend so it was packed.  There were lots of samples to taste and flea market to browse.

We left the market and headed for the waterfront to get some blue crabs for lunch.  We picked a vendor and ordered a dozen which came in a large brown sack filled with crabs and old bay seasoning.  We grabbed some curb and proceeded to feast.  No easy feat without crab dismantling tools.  Thoroughly sated and covered in orange spices we trekked back into town to visit some museums, both to take a look at their wares and to hobo-bathe.

The American History Museum was way too crowded.  We managed to check out the Abe Lincoln exhibit before giving up and hitting the modern side of the National Gallery of Art.  It wasn’t nearly as crowded.  Surprise, surprise.  The slack-jawed yokels would rather stare at the Fonz’s jacket than a Jackson Pollock.  I got to see this Picasso, which was amazing, and some nice stuff by Magritte, Rothko and co.

We rested up after our museum tour and then hoofed it to the Lincoln, Vietnam, and Korean memorials.  I don’t really have anything much to say about them.

We caught the bus home for a much needed break.  Later that evening we met up with a friend from IU for some drinks at The Raven in Mt. Pleasant.  This is my kind of bar.  It’s small, dark and worn in.  They have a really good juke box, and photos of Marlene Dietrich on one wall and the Declaration of Independance on the other.  If it wasn’t so noisy, it would be perfect.

I visited DC in the 8th grade but I really didn’t remember much about it, so I wanted to be a tourist and check out a few of the museums and monuments again.  I can safely say that I am now content never to visit them again.

We started Friday off at the Native American Museum for lunch at the museum cafe, which features takes on native foods from different regions of North and Central America.  We tried buffalo chili on fry bread (man fry bread is so good) and a side salad of smoked duck with currants.  It’s well made and quite tasty for a museum cafe.  After lunch we explored the museum a bit.  It’s an interesting but ultimately depressing experience.

Looking to cheer ourselves up, we made our way to the Natural History museum.  We checked out the sea creatures and dinosaurs.  The giant quid is impressive, but nothing beats dino bones in the cool category.  It’s dino DNA!  Exhausted from two days of walking we headed for home.

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not so good

delicious

I took a trip to DC to visit Lauren last week.  We decided to check out Philadelphia since she’s so close.  Our bus “depot” was in the basement of a row house in Chinatown.  Very shady and hilarious.  The bus itself was straight out of 1992.  Crazy neon shapes and squiggles on the upholstery.

When we arrived we checked out the Reading Market for coffee and honey sticks.  It’s a pretty nice place to browse Pennsylvania Dutch products.  We also had to do the tourist thing and go to Geno’s and Pat’s for a cheesesteak comparison.  I’ve never had a cheesesteak, and quite frankly they’ve never sounded very appealing, but when in Philly…   Everything about the Pat’s experience was better.  The place wasn’t gaudy like Geno’s, the staff was surlier and the sandwich was delicious, juicy and flavorful.  I can understand why people make a big deal out of these things now.  It would be hard to beat this for best drunk food.

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