Zach's Visit to DC - June Edition

So far, 3rd brother Zach has everyone else beat in visiting me in DC - 4 times. 4 TIMES!

Though I suppose that's to be expected, when his job brings him out here every other month this year. Otherwise he'd be at 1 visit, tied with the other Barlow boys. Mom and Dad, Abby - better step up your game.

Z was out here this last week, and we met up after work on Thursday for some dinner and dancing. The dinner was planned. The dancing? Impromptu, but great all the same.

It had been a long, relatively busy day, and I hadn't really had an actual lunch, so by the time Z could make it out to my part of town, I was starving. So I took him across the street to a Mexican restaurant a short block from where I work. I'd seen it many times, but hadn't been in, so I took him with me to try it. 

Turns out, it's quite the popular happy hour/dinner spot for Capitol Hill peeps. I haven't been in such a loud restaurant before. It was crazy. So we pulled out our Chris voices and did our best to hear each other.

Dinner was great, it really hit the spot...and then some. After we finished, we decided to take a walk around the Capitol, to enjoy the view of the mall in twilight and take a look around the place. Plus, it was much easier to hear each other, so we saved any real stories for then. 

We passed the front of the Capitol, spotted some friendly fireflies, and then started going to the back of the Capitol to finish the loop.

This is what we found:

GO DC STATEHOOD! I honestly don't think DC will find itself becoming the 51st state anytime soon - far too many scandals in its governing body every year - but it is certainly a great reason to throw rallies and concerts on the Capitol lawn.

We approached a medium-sized group of people boppin' to a few rappers/hip-hop artists and their supporting trumpet, sax, and whatever other instruments they incorporated. It really was pretty catchy; Z and I found ourselves enjoying the beat and the music for awhile. And the group there had some good dancers as well - at least, there were some dedicated dancers grooving to the beat.

After we busted a few moves of our own on the outskirts of the rally, we continued on our walk, circling around the House-side buildings and traipsing through the Botanic Garden (Note: I looked this up, Z - 'botanical' and 'botanic' are interchangeable, so I'm assuming it would've been hard to fit the extra 'al' on the gate and signs, so DC kept it to 'botanic' for simplicity. And I'm claiming that as fact).

The Botanic Garden was fun to check out. And Z, ever the smartypants, correctly guessed that one of the 2 windmills spun at 200 kw in its energy-gathering efforts. We basked in his amazing reasoning skills/mental capacity for the next few minutes, and then continued on our walk. I pointed out the Magnolia trees lining the sides of the buildings, and we huffed and puffed our way up the very slight hill back to the metro by my building - in our defense, our little tum-tums were still stuffed full, and that hill is deceptively difficult. All the same, good luck on your upcoming bike race, Z - hopefully your endurance can build up a little more somehow between now and then :).

Finally, we left DC and made our way home, sharing a metro ride for 2 stops before I rushed off to grab my transfer (it was  timing at its best - my train pulled up 30 seconds after I got to the platform) and left Z to make his way home down the Orange Line.

And that was the last I saw of Z; he flew home this morning. Hopefully no tornado got in his way returning to StL this time...