Washington, DC Travel Guide
8/29/2008 at 12:00 PM
Tags: Legoland, Geeky Travel, Labor Day Travel Coverage (all tags)
Speaking of Legos...
If you're in the Washington, DC area this weekend, you're in luck, because there's a massive Lego fair organized just for AFOLs like you. (That's Adult Fans of Lego, to the uninformed.) Children are allowed, but only if they're in the company of adults.
Brickfair is actually not affiliated with the LEGO company, but is organized by Wamalug, the Washington, DC Metropolitan Area Lego Users Group. (This town has an acronym for everything.)
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by BS
8/28/2008 at 12:30 PM
Tags: New DC Restaurants, Restaurants (all tags)
Fast food restaurants usually start in America and then make their slow, unhealthy crawl across the globe, so it's nice to see the rare occurrence of an international chain encroaching on these shores. Nando's Peri-Peri is South Africa's most popular chain restaurant--well, after KFC and McDonald's--and recently opened its first stateside branch in DC's Gallery Place neighborhood.
The namesake Portuguese-East African peri-peri sauce is made from a spicy red chili and can be found on tables throughout South Africa and Mozambique; it's smothered on grilled chicken here. The menu has been Americanized just a bit, with additions like a steak sandwich and a portobello wrap, but the browned spicy chicken is certifiably how they do it in SA.
Need another reason to pass by this crowded neighborhood's other fast food options? Nando's has Portuguese beer, and wine by the glass and bottle.
Related Stories:
· Nando's Peri-Peri [Official Site]
· New DC Restaurant: Commonwealth Gastropub [Jaunted]
· Washington, DC Travel coverage [Jaunted]
[Photo: Nando's]
by BS
8/21/2008 at 10:30 AM
Tags: Restaurants, New DC Restaurants, Beer (all tags)
Northwest DC's Columbia Heights--which only two years ago was a dead zone for restaurants, save a scattering of Salvadoran holes-in-the-wall--is suddenly the District's hottest new spot for eats. New restaurants in the neighborhood include comfort food spot The Heights, hipster bar and grill Red Derby, brick oven pizzeria Red Rocks and Latino tapas restaurant Rumbero's.
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by BS
8/12/2008 at 12:45 PM
Tags: Capitol Hills, Television Travel, TV Travel (all tags)
Lifetime will start filming its own scripted reality show in Washington, DC next month, and the network plans to rush it to air by November. We're already prepping our Google Map mashup!
The show no doubt promises to give us more of the same vacant stares, brunch-time conversations and catfights that have made LC and Heidi famous. "Starring" will be a few local socialites, including Katherine Kennedy, Krista Johnson and Sophie Pyle. Krista told The Examiner:
It’s all going to be about our real lives. It’s going to be in the same vein of MTV’s "The Hills" but ours is going to be more realistic.
How is that even possible?!
Related Stories:
· It's Official: DC Gets Its Own Reality Show [The Examiner, via]
· Television Travel coverage [Jaunted]
by pbb
8/07/2008 at 1:00 PM
Tags: Best-Raw-Bars-Map, Restaurants, Oysters (all tags)
When looking for a raw bar, sometimes you want a dingy little seafront shack full of locals cracking open shellfish that were caught that morning. Sea Catch is definitely not that.
Set in a 150-year-old Georgetown mansion, there's nothing quaint about the restaurant's 31-foot, white marble raw bar. But what it lacks in homeyness Sea Catch makes up for with its gigantic list of always-fresh seafood. Not exactly for locavores, the place offers several dozen types of oysters from both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. There are also farm-raised mussels, clams, shrimp, stone crabs and house-smoked salmon.
Plus there's the ridiculously over-the-top $80 shellfish skyscraper, a giant mound of all the above topped with lobster cocktail and jumbo lump crab meat. Not quite your style? Come back for the $1 raw bar happy hour.
Related Stories:
· Sea Catch Restaurant [Official Site]
· Best Raw Bars coverage [Jaunted]
[Photo: Sea Catch]
by BS
7/22/2008 at 10:15 AM
Tags: Architecture, Architecture Travel, Eero Saarinen, Eero-Saarinen-Travel-Map, IAD (all tags)
If you've been paying attention, then you would know that our architect of the week, Eero Saarinen, designed the TWA terminal at JFK that's soon to become JetBlue's flagship hub. But did you know that Saarinen also designed the main terminal at Washington Dulles International Airport?
He did! And we like it, even if some people don't. Designed by Saarinen in 1958 and dedicated by President Kennedy in 1962, the airport was the first to be specifically created for the jet age. In fact, some design elements such as extended runways were created in hopes of a future for IAD as a spaceport. Although that hasn't happened yet, the design supposedly inspired the construction of the airport in Taipei.
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by kjb
7/21/2008 at 9:50 AM
Tags: Museums, Summer Travel, Buildings, Architecture, Architecture Travel, Eero Saarinen (all tags)
Eero Saarinen is the Finnish-American architect who designed the St. Louis Arch, JFK's Terminal 5, Dulles International's Main Terminal and the instantly recognizable tulip chair. But he never got the praise that other modern architects enjoyed, either because his style was so revolutionary or because he died young, the victim of a brain tumor.
Through August 23, the National Building Museum in DC is hosting the first-ever major retrospective of his career, including documents, photos, models, videos and furniture. We went to check it out a few weeks ago and were pretty impressed. While the whole exhibition takes only about an hour to see, it was very cool to immerse ourselves in the work of a single architect. And, hey, the show is free.
But since seeing drawings and photos is only half the fun of architecture travel, we'll be taking a deeper look at some of Saarinen's most interesting buildings this week. Stay tuned.
Related Stories:
· Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future [Official Site]
· Architecture Travel coverage [Jaunted]
by pbb
7/15/2008 at 3:00 PM
Tags: Museums, Culture Travel, William Shakespeare, Summer Travel, Theater (all tags)
A stolen copy of the First Folio, the first known collection of William Shakespeare's plays, turned up last week in DC when a rare-book enthusiast took it to the Folger Shakespeare Library. In a case of no good deed goes unpunished, the British man is being considered a suspect in the 1998 robbery of the document from Durham University in England.
While not as rare as the Holy Grail (or even Crystal Skulls!), First Folio copies are still relatively rare, and the Folger has the largest collection in the world, with 79 of the estimated 228 left in the world. (A thousand were supposedly printed.) In case you have one stashed under your mattress, it could be worth over $6 million at auction.
Dead tree media not your scene? See one of the First Folio plays, "Hamlet," for free at the Carter Barron Amphitheatre (16th St. and Colorado Ave. NW) this summer with the Shakespeare Theatre Company. Pick up your gratis tickets at the Washington Post office every weekday or at the theater on the day of the show. But leave kids under 10 at the nunnery, as this show contains "sexual content."
Related Stories:
· Stolen Shakespeare First Edition Found in Washington [AFP, via Yahoo]
· Winchester Mystery House Blogger Talks [Jaunted]
· Washington, DC coverage [Jaunted]
[Photo: manfire]
by egw
