This past weekend was the last official weekend of the summer. We had some beautiful weather to go along with it. I can’ t believe it’s already the start of fall!
We started our weekend off with an IBM sponsored picnic and baseball game at Camden Yards. The picnic started at 5:30 (1.5 hours before the game). We decided that it should be safe to leave the apartment at 3:45, and we would have plenty of time to make it up to Baltimore to enjoy the picnic before the game. What we didn’t anticipate was “worse than normal” Friday afternoon traffic (according to the radio traffic reporters). It took us 2.5 hours to drive up to Baltimore — and didn’t make it to the stadium until about 6:30. We were still able to take advantage of the hot dogs, popcorn and beer. After we were done eating and chatting, we headed up to our seats. Even though everyone we were with had purchased our tickets through the IBM club, our seats were all over the place. We just decided to head up to the nearest seats. Luckily, even though it was a Orioles vs Red Sox game, there were still plenty of open seats in the Upper Reserve. The Orioles lost (of course), but we had a great time at the game.
Saturday evening we went out for a sushi dinner. We hadn’t had a sushi dinner since Mid-July and were really craving some good sushi. There are several sushi places walking distance from our place, but none of them looked to be “good” sushi places. So, I went online to find reviews and choose a sushi restaurant. Many of the places in DC seemed to be very trendy sushi places — where you pay a lot for the atmosphere, not necessarily the quality of the fish. Then I found Tachibana in McLean, VA – just about 5 miles from here. It looked like an authentic, traditional style Japanese sushi bar and restaurant. It was absolutely wonderful! I think Ross and I have now found our favorite sushi restaurant. We sat at the sushi bar and ordered as we went along. I thought the fish was great — especially the magaro. We really enjoyed our splurge of a meal. We will certainly be going back in the future.
Sunday was a beautiful day — warm, sunny and not too humid. I wanted to get out of the apartment and do something outside since it was such a beautiful day. So, Ross and I headed to the National Botanical Gardens. It was very nice to be able to hop onto the metro to take us to the gardens. The Botanical Gardens are located between the Smithsonians and the Capitol building, and is free to the public. The Botanical Gardens themselves were quite beautiful. They had many different rooms including an orchid room, dessert , exotic plants, rainforest, and even a small Hawaii area. The rainforest area was quite tall, with a catwalk where you could walk above the plants – which I thought was pretty cool. They also had an exhibit with different scents and spices from different plants — it was interesting to smell the different curries, spices and fragrances from around the world. There was also a “children’s garden” where children could dig, plant, water, and play. Ross was fascinated with the water fountains. I think he wanted to play with the fountain that you could pump yourself — but there were too many kids already playing with it!
After we walked through the Botanical gardens, we headed outside to the National Garden. All the plants and flowers in the Botanical gardens were nicely arranged and manicured. I expected that the National Garden would also be a nicely manicured garden. However, it was more of a “natural” garden with paths running through it. It was a disappointment after the beautiful Botanical Gardens.
PS nicole wrote this post about 3 weeks ago and I only now got around to adding the pictures.
