hooray for Macys! (ooh, and what nicely manicured nails!)
Today was one of those fantastic Saturdays where you're just really relaxed and mosey around, going where the day takes you.
After a lazy morning of sunshine, the Vampire Weekend album and bagels, courtesy of huntergatherer Max, we set off to walk to Chinatown, to get a sense of how the city is put together. It was lovely and warm again (but not so sunny), though lots of shops were closed as we walked through Foggy Bottom (this is what I now know the area where Max's office is to be called. Having seen a bit more of DC, I can confirm that it is indeed a lot like the City in London) and it was all kind of quiet for a Saturday.
Not to worry, before long we encountered lots of people at this fancy pile:
our Washington correspondent
It really does just look like a nice place to live, rather than a fancy seat of power. I wonder how many times it gets painted - it is indeed extremely white.
And, for the baying masses who've been asking for more references to the West Wing (erm, Ed), how do you like these apples?
(The West Wing of the White House)
I'm not going to suggest that this was more exciting than laying eyes on where the leader of the free world lives, but at lunch I saw for the first ever time a bottle of creamy dressing with three spouts on the top. So just one squirt delivers three lines of sauce to your sandwich simultaneously. That's pretty exciting.
However, more exciting than that, and potentially than seeing the White House, was this, which we came across as we carried on downtown. A long line of segways glidin
g across a pedestrian crossing. It was quite the oddest thing we'd seen all day and turned out to be none other than a segway tour of the city!! This will for sure be coming to a DC-based blog near you soon - too good to miss! Actually, there's lots of tours of the city I'd like to do. On our way back from the cherry blossoms the other day, we saw a night cycle tour, which would probably be fun. And I want to go on an open-top bus, like a tourist, too.
However, we kept our eyes on the prize of the Spy Museum, where we were hotfooting it to from the White House (except I didn't hotfoot anywhere, because it turns out that my Georgetown jaunt in flipflops destroyed my feet. Ouch.). Unfortunately, several hundred other people had the same idea as us and not only was there an enormous queue, but it was sold out for quite some time. Establishing that it's possible to pre-book tickets for the museum and a curious simulation exercise where you actually are a spy, we headed to the Chinatown cinema we'd been at on Wednesday night, to see 'Smart People'.
The movie was a little 'meh' and, though Ellen Page was as outstanding as we were hoping she would be, I never quite bought Dennis Quaid. Thomas Hayden Church was really funny, but I wonder if that's just because his character got the best bits of the script. And it was nice to remind ourselves of the kinds of movies Sarah Jessica Parker did before 'Sex & The City'. But the movie just didn't really manage to achieve anything. It was good to eat a bowl of Haagen Dazs the size of my head though, especially as the bowl was made from waffle and had been dipped in chocolate and nuts. Mmmmm. Plus, I got extremely excited by the trailer for 'Son of Rambow' and thought Bex might've passed out if she'd seen the 'Blindness' trailer, featuring Mark Ruffalo AND Gael Garcia Bernal! Again with the mmmm.
As we came out of the movie theatre, the segways were surpassed by easily the oddest thing we saw all day, which was a woman in the foyer with a screen built into her t-shirt, which was showing some sort of advert for sports. Sorry for the lack of photo.
After wandering around Chinatown a little bit, we had supper and headed back to the apartment, via an extremely pleasing independent bookstore that also sells music and DVDs. It now transpires that Olsson's is in fact Washington's oldest bookstore and I plan to spend a lot of time there. I wish I could get a job there. Max irked me by getting the MGMT album, so as soon as we got home, I ordered the new Hot Chip from iTunes and, in doing so, discovered that I'm not as big a fan of the Ting Tings and Be Your Own Pet as I'd originally thought. However, Hot Chip - who I thought I really hated - bust.
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