A hell of a season man

31st Aug:

Our last day of August, we have already taken in a number of world famous locations in just a matter of a week, and we are loving every moment of it!
Today was quite a chilled out day, we woke up early as Jessica had to go to class at 8:30am, so we left American U and headed out in our car today instead of using the Metro.
We were on the search for Jessie’s Crab shack (or as I call it ‘Jessie got crabs!’) it was featured on Anthony Bourdain’s ‘Food Porn’ TV show. It was just south of the Franklin D Roosevelt memorial, right on the river. The time was around 10am and it was a bit quite, it turns out that in the morning it is a fish market and only after lunch does the food really get going, Paolo decided that it was a bit early to get messy with crab and I agreed it was a good point so we decided to give it a miss. I called my friend Nancy (who I won the Lottery with in Hong Kong) and arranged to meet up.
Nancy and her boyfriend Alex (who Im also friends with from Hong Kong, he almost killed me by driving on the wrong side of the road last time we met) both attend Georgetown Univeristy, its slightly west of the Capitol Mall. We met up with them at their Uni and we got the full tour, its an old university steeped in history, if anything happens to congress then it is the location for emergency congress which I think is quite a cool fact. Georgetown is big on their basketball but have only won one American football game in the past 2 years.

We then asked them if they wanted to join us for dinner, we wanted to visit a place that was featured on Anthony Bordain’s TV show and also on Man vs Food, its called Ben’s Chilli Bowl. Everybody we talked to in Washington D.C. told us we should check it out. Its in an old part of town, and its one the flashiest coloured buildings, we walked in and it looked very much like an old time diner, on the wall was a sign saying the only people allowed to eat for free there was Bill Cosby and the Obama family, this a place that Obama came to eat just after taking office. We ordered ‘Ben’s Half Smoked’ their famous dish, we didn’t realise that it was a hotdog covered in chilli and also a bowl of chips covered in cheese and chilli, these were our first hotdogs in America! Check them out.

We dropped Nancy and Alex back at Georgetown, it was brilliant to see them again. We then headed over to the Pentagon City mall, over near the Pentagon, I semi remembered the route from when I went there 4 years ago. It was quite a disappointment, I’m not sure why people keep raving about malls in America, so far we haven’t seen any real reason to spend much time there, the shops are generic. So after only an hour wandering around we headed back to American U.
We met up with Jessica and caught up about our day but she had to go to an residence assistant meeting for an hour so left us in the common room where we met a group of the freshman who just started from high school. There was a bit of drama at the halls, police cars and an ambulance turned up and there was commotion downstairs and it turned out that somebody on the floor below had attempted suicide. Reminds me of Van Wilder: Party Liason where he talks someone out of jumping off the building.

Jessica came back and we headed off to ‘pre-game’ at her friends house, there we met Bodal and Tomas and we played NBA 2010 on Xbox for drinks (similar to how we play Pro or Fifa for drinks), these lads were hilarious, we did the whole ‘drinking from red solo cups‘ experience before making our way into central D.C.
While there we had more to drink and we taught everybody how to dance.
I met some English lads there and had a cool chat about living in America, they studied at Kings like me and had been living in D.C. for 7 years.
The clubbing still hasn’t been able to measure up to British standards, I think its because they aren’t as used to it as we are in Europe.

Quote of the day: (on our way to Ben;s)
Alex: “Ben’s Chilli Bowl will take a year off your life, buts its totally worth it”