Washington DC (Jan 24-26)

I made a quick trip to Washington DC this week. I left Phoenix on Thursday morning and my plane landed at 4:10 in the afternoon - about 15 minutes early! This gave me just enough time to catch a cab to my hotel, check-in, take my bag to my room and run downstairs to my 5:00 pm meeting. I even had 2 minutes to spare!

Between the working dinner and meetings, my evening lasted until about 9 pm. I was tired, it was cold out, and I hadn't unpacked, so I headed up to the room to watch some tv and relax. Most of Friday was full of meetings, but we were released around 6:00 pm. A colleague and I headed to dinner. The first restaurant had an hour and half wait, and we were hungry, so we walked a bit further from the hotel. We eventually decided on Rosa Mexicano. The chips were a bit too salty, but the guacamole was delicious. Both of us enjoyed our meals.

After dinner, we wandered through Chinatown on the way back to the hotel.

The night was still early, so I met up with a couple more colleagues and we took a walk to the mall and to view the capitol at night, before heading back to the hotel.

U.S. Capitol building at night

Washington monument at night

On Saturday, I had to get up early in the morning for my day of meetings. I had about an hour to spare between the time my meetings ended and I had to head to the airport. I thought about trying to do a bit of sightseeing, but it was cold out and I wasn't particularly motivated. Instead, I picked up a copy of Michael Crichton's book Next and started reading that. By the time my flight back to Phoenix landed, I was done with the book. It was ok, but not one of his best works. I thought State of Fear was better.