On The Mall

Friday October 12, 2012

We checked ourselves into Capital Yacht Club this morning and for only $16 a day are allowed to use all their facilities including dinghy dock, showers, laundry, and clubhouse.  There’s another marina next door which offers basically the same thing for just a few dollars less, but they didn’t have something we wanted.  Our friends on Anthyllide told us that here you could have all the fountain pop you wanted in the clubhouse.  I’m sure you’re aware by now that Matt is addicted to Coca-Cola and we even have syrup and a homemade soda machine trying to duplicate it although it never comes out quite right.  Loading all our shower gear into the dinghy we tied off and got ourselves checked in and headed straight to the showers.  I feel bad for the family that got in just a few minutes after me because even though there were two other showers I was in mine for a good twenty minutes.  It had been a month since my last one and I was not going to go quickly or quietly.  After we were all clean we walked out to see Andy and John were checking in as well, they had gotten in an hour after us the previous night.  They told us we had to check out the fish market next door and after dropping our shower supplies in the dinghy we walked over to check it out.

The market was huge and probably sold everything you could think of.  They had lobsters and Chesapeake crabs, surprisingly the same size we had caught ourselves.  There were oysters, octopus, and so many fish of which I’m not even sure what they were.  None of us bought anything at the moment but it was fun to wander around and check out the variety they had to offer.  Making our way back to Serendipity we quickly got ready and went back out to see the town.  We didn’t have any museum plans, but just wanted to walk around and see what was there.  We climbed a big hill right across from the yacht club, then through L’Enfant Plaza and were at the Smithsonian Castle.  It was probably less than a mile for us to get there.  We walked through the gardens around it and then across the street to the mall.  To our right we could see the Capital Building and to our left was the Washington Monument.  Through the afternoon we walked to the Capital Building, back around to the Washington Monument and even over to the White House.  By the end of the day we felt like we had seen almost every big sight in D.C. and were completely exhausted.  I can’t even describe how picturesque and pretty the area was, so I’ll let the photos do the talking.