DC Visit

We have had a very good week visiting family and getting around the DC area. It was great fun reacquainting ourselves with our granddaughter and children -good conversation and good food. Serena is growing into a wonderful young lady with lots of energy and ideas.

A trip to IKEA could have inspired us to refurnish a whole new apartment but we resisted! I did find a chair that I might have to have! It was especially good to be in an international setting, I had forgotten how energizing it was to hear a mixture of foreign languages being spoken in casual conversations around one.

We were treated to a great performance of the Shakespeare Theater’s production of “The Liar” by Pierre Corneille, translated and adapted by David Ives. It was fast paced, funny and well acted. . If you are in the DC area try to get tickets, it is atr the Lansburgh Theater, and if not for this at least another of the Shakespeare Theater productions, you will not be disappointed.

Make sure you visit Jaleo for a meal, it is part of the ThinkFoodGroup brainchild of chef/owner José Andrés (recently interviewed on 60 minutes). A native of Spain, he has introduced the American public, very successfully to Tapas and other delightful Spanish cuisine. Tapas are small servings of many traditional dishes. We each ordered three or four dishes from the menu and then enjoyed tasting them all. The dishes ranged from a plate of assorted cheeses, a wonderful dish with spinach, pine-nuts, chopped apples and raisins (going to try and reproduce this at home), grilled lamb chops with rosemary sauce, grilled shrimp with sautéed garlic, asparagus with red pepper sauce, hanger steak with piquillo peppers, spicy chorizo wrapped in crispy potato, seared trout wrapped in Serrano ham, and several more, the whole meal was coupled with a great Spanish wine. Not to be resisted were the decadent desserts, we settled on Flan, Chocolate Torte, Cranberry Sorbet and White Chocolate and Raspberry Ice Cream.

Mother’s Day was a real treat with a trip to the National Arboretum to view the Azaleas and the Bonsai Exhibit. We enjoyed a picnic by the reflecting pool, fed the Koi and wandered back to the car through the herb garden.

The weather has been beautiful until today when it rained allowing us to do laundry and pack ready to hit the road tomorrow.