Time to bid farewell

Last day in D.C. - a quiet, warm (almost hot) sunday. Still on our itinerary: Capitol Hill, the neighborhood southeast to the Capitol building, a very quaint, wealthy residential neighborhood with beautiful architecture and lots of green, but also with the vibrant Barracks Row Main Street. This artery of life offers plenty of cafés, restaurants and bars and some shops, among them an organic supermarket and a great bakery.

Our first destination was the Eastern Market, a big market hall with outdoor vendors around the building and a sunday flea market adjacent. Eastern Market consists mostly of real food vendors - fruit, veggies, meat & sausage, baking goods etc. - and in contrast to the Reading Terminal Market in Philly there is only one restaurant inside, famous for its breakfast pancakes. Since there were long lines, we opted for apple fritters and donuts from a vendor for breakfast instead. We - and Germans in general - aren’t good in waiting for something to eat or drink … always admired the patience of Americans to stand in line to get a table or to buy a meal. We would just head on to another place.



We checked out the „flea market“, which was more of an crafts/vintage market. Lots of families around, apparently locals from the neighborhood. Since we still had enough time to burn before heading to the airport we took the Circulator bus back to the Capitol and I took a couple more photos of the Mall in the morning light.

With this superb view we also bit farewell to a city which is not easy to love on first view. It needs some more indepth exploring to get to know and like D.C., but it’s been a good start and we’ll certainly be back. At the latest for the first update of the guidebook we did research for.

We walked over to Union Station to catch another bus which brought us back to the hotel. We checked out and by train and bus - still a little complicated by public transport - we arrived at Dulles Airport, where we are sitting right now. Our plane is delayed for (at least) 1,5 hours , but fortunately they do have free WiFi, so that we are able to work.