But when I was woken up (almost certainly by Stompy) at 9am, I was so exhilarated by the notion that the day was all mine to do with as I wanted, I just had to leap out of bed and get going!
It's been a beautifully sunny day, so we walked up to the Woodley Park area, just across the bridge, to have lunch there. We don't know the neighbourhood at all, but have always thought it looked nice, as there's a main street lined with nice al fresco restaurants and shops, so we thought we'd check it out.
On the way, I had to call my sister for a phone number and was very entertained by her talk of the new series of 'Strictly Come Dancing' which she and Nadge were watching on a dark night in Wales while we were wandering through the sunshine at lunchtime. I was very excited to hear the lineup and almost miss those cosy nights watching Saturday night telly, but not quite.
After lunch, Max suggested popping up the road to the zoo. I wasn't keen on this idea at all. I don't like zoos and haven't been to one since I was little. In fact, I really hate them. But Max said that there's no entry fee at the one here (so it's not like we were giving money to the cause of keeping animals caged up) and that they're all about the ethical treatment and study of animals, so it's almost more like a safari park, where they get to roam all over big outdoor spaces. So I reluctantly gave in.
I can exclusively reveal that none of that big wide open spaces thing is true. Zebras are kept in these tiny paddocks that they can cover in two bounds, elephants are in minuscule cells that they can hardly turn around in and the gigantic hippo we saw had only a pool the size of a paddling pool - shorter than the hippo is long - to swim in.
The giant panda area was pretty big and nice, but for some reason, the pandas were inside, sitting on concrete, mournfully chewing on some bamboo.
I will concede that the baby red pandas were very cute though, and exciting to see as they're massively endangered and rare:
However, the monkeys. Oh! Don't even talk to me about the monkeys. They were all inside, in these tiny stark cells with nothing but a big branch in each and they were just sitting and staring. Their faces look so human that it was hard not to see how miserable they looked. They reminded me of prisoners on hunger strike, or something. It was too sad. Especially having seen so many wonderful monkeys in the wild in Costa Rica. In fact that made it weird with other animals, too - we'd become so used to straining our eyes and peering through jungles to see creatures in their natural habitat, that to have them served up to us on a plate / in tiny enclosures where there's nowhere for them to hide, was odd and unsettling.
I totally get that we are incredibly privileged to be able to travel to places where these animals live in the wild and that that's something not everyone can do, so zoos are wonderful places to introduce children to amazing animals and fire up their imagination. But it just made me sooooo sad to see the animals look so miserable.
I perked up quite a lot when we got to the sea organisms section, where there was beautiful coral and these awesome comb jellies which looked as though they had little coloured electric currents running through them. It's really tricky to describe, but the jellies are transparent and have a u-shaped loop inside them, through which these little dots of colour run in a continuous loop. They were coooool.
With my opinion of zoos firmly unchanged, we headed to Chinatown to see 'Burn After Reading'. I wasn't expecting much, because the reviews have been pretty bad, and sure enough I didn't really like it. Max really enjoyed it, but I just thought it was a little pointless and rife with wide-eyed overacting. However, I'm very happy to accept that I probably missed the point.
By the time we got home, I really didn't want to go out again, but we'd agreed to go to Jean's birthday drinks. Having made the mistake of sitting down on the sofa (deadly for anyone with tired legs who then has to get up again), we put on our moderately glad rags and wandered down to Dupont Circle, where Jean was having drinks in this really rotten Irish bar, called Biddy Mulligans, underneath a Jury's Inn hotel.
I don't understand the fascination with really soulless Irish theme bars here, but that's where Geoff and Sarah had the DC leg of their wedding celebrations, too.
In good news, there was no sign of Jean when we got to Biddy Mulligans. I did several, increasingly embarrassing laps of the bar and even checked the loos, but she and her group obviously weren't there.
In bad news, I hadn't brought my phone out with me, so we had to walk all the way back to the apartment to get my phone, turn it on for the first time today and get the message that Jean came to her senses, realised Biddys was gross and switched location to the nice bar attached to the hotel where Maxy and I spent our first weekend in DC. So, having changed out of my painful heels and into flat shoes more practical for all this schlepping, we headed straight out the door again.
There were only four people in the party when we arrived, so I was pleased that we'd made the effort. We met Jean's boyfriend Joe who looks a lot like John Stamos, and two other girls. Jean was celebrating her 38th birthday, but *genuinely* looks no older than 30. It's the freakiest thing. She and Joe met through online dating, which I find intriguing, and he seems very nice, if kind of stereotypically brash for an Italian American.
Our number eventually swelled to 9 and Max and I spent most of our time chatting to a friend of Jean's from the state department, called JP. Jean and JP were stationed in Bogota at the same time and JP regaled us with stories about how they'd go out partying until 5am and then go to work. It's the Colombian way.
JP's job is to freeze the financial assets of terrorists, which is pretty exciting. I asked if the job ever got him down, because he spends his day faced with the reality of how awful human beings can be, but he said it would do were it not for the fact that he's screwing them by taking their money away.
JP strikes me as something of an international playboy, in that he's always working in a different country and in every place, manages to seek out the wildest parties and is one of those people who won't take no for an answer if he suggests going for a drink. He told us about an upcoming party at the Swedish embassy - the after-show party of a fashion show - which I can't imagine would be as hideous as the polo event at the Argentinian embassy, so we're really looking forward to going.
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