Sunday, March 14, 2010

the (very) long way home

so, when we started this blog, we promised ourselves that every friday we would take the long way home from work. enjoy life. take our time. take a back road. stop at a store. grab a bottle of wine. enjoy some music. and try not to not freak out about the traffic.


but this weekend we certainly took the looonng way home.


friday, we took our dear friend alexa to the train station and then went to dinner at flirt. (we suggest the down under roll. mmmmm)


then we drove down to dc, arriving at 2 am. and hailey begged and begged and begged until all parties involved conceeded to drive past the white house. she wanted to take great pictures of the white house lit up in all its peaceful glory while the majority of the city slept.


driving in circles, hailey kept saying, it's right here i know it's right here! (if we were outside, we're sure she would have been stomping her foot). and in fact she was right. except that the white house wasn't lit up. we guess nobody was home? so we didn't get any good pictures for you.


(so we'll share this one:)






so then we decided that it was okay we didn't have pictures to share from 2 am, that we would get fabulous ones for you on saturday.




well.


there was a lot of rain on saturday. and wind. and hailey broke her umbrella (and then thanked the gods she was intelligent enough to bring her rainboots). there was so much rain that we had to leave our cameras behind so we have no pictures of the city to share with you.


but we went to the international spy museum, which was fantastic, and highly recommended you go when you're in dc (there's a great shop and cafe....filled with spies??? perhaps.)






we'd all really like to be spies now.


we enjoyed the beer sampler at gordon biersch's.  and then went to shamrock fest. 

which is really why we brought our cameras, to share with you the s*it show that it was supposed to be. 

but because of the rain....there are no pictures to be had. and no crazy stories to tell (except one crazy girl rolling in a huge puddle of water with a short denim skirt on and a white tanktop...which it was far too cold to be wearing let alone rolling in the water with). 

after the shamrock fest, we got ready at the hotel, and went to capitol city for dinner.


it was a pretty early night because we HAD to come home to go into the city to see lies maculan's installation in chelsea (which we heard about from the ever fabulous refinery 29.


we wish we had great pictures and a review to share with you, but the george washington bridge needed emergency repairs on the lower level. 

so if you don't know anything about the tri-state area or the gwb or people in this area who drive in the rain, let us share a few tips with you.

the first is that we've never once hit traffic so bad we kicked ourselves for not checking the traffic.

today we did.

when you take the gwb, all trucks have to use the upper level (since 9/11). so when the upper is backed up we take the lower (though we prefer the upper for the great views).

and there's always traffic, but mostly it's doable. 

and people in this area don't know how to get their heads out of their asses what to do with themselves when a drop of rain falls, let alone a storm that wipes out power across the state, shuts down highways for tree removal, crushes power lines, and causes a water advisory counties wide. so it was a mess.


so we spent 3 hours trying to get to the gwb, which we when we started getting close to the bridge realized that it would have taken another 2 hours just to get to chelsea. which would have been 5 hours in the car (after driving 4 home from dc earlier). we could have gone to dinner in atlantic city and come back for that time investment. 


so we turned around and ended up at the mason jar, five minutes from where we started our journey.


long way home - success.

emotional result - absolutely miserable.


so that's our weekend story.


what did you do on your long way home???