French Food, Fireworks, and Flocks of People

Ever since arriving back in the US I've been maintaining a relatively low profile. However, since I blew my cover a few weeks ago by logging onto AOL Instant Messenger, I decided that I may as well get out and do something drastic... like actually see my friends.

To that end I spent this fourth of July on the national mall with Laura and her fiancé Gerry (I'm pretty sure that's how he spells it. If not, he'll get over it.).

We started our evening downtown by seeking out a place to eat dinner. Unfortunately, our choices were extremely limited. It eventually came down to a choice between someplace called "Elephant and Castle" which had an hour wait, some other restaurant chain which Laura and Gerry had eaten at earlier that day, or a French restaurant that could seat us immediately. As tempting as the mystery elephant restaurant was, we opted for the French place.

Dinner was good. Gerry and I were a little disappointed that they had run out of hamburgers; we felt it our patriotic duty to order hamburgers since we were celebrating the fourth by eating at a French restaurant. Apparently we weren't the only ones with that thought.

Admittedly, the coolest thing about dinner was our waitress. No, not because she was cute (I have no comment on that). She had an interesting accent which prompted Laura to ask where she's from. It turns out she's from Poland. Warsaw in fact. But wait, there's more! Not only is she from Warsaw, the reason she's living in the US is that her father works for the Polish embassy in Washington! Needless to say everyone at our table (well, at least me anyway) thought this was a very amusing coincidence.

After a very leisurely dinner we headed down to the national mall to view the fireworks. Unfortunately, due to the heightened security procedures we quickly realized we had no chance of actually making it onto the mall before the fireworks started. So we just did what everyone else was doing: we stood in the middle of Constitution Avenue and watched the fireworks.



All in all it was an enjoyable evening. Good food. Good fireworks. Questionable company, but Laura and Gerry could say the same I guess.

The only downside to the evening was watching someone almost get trampled in Metro Center when the number of people in the station went beyond capacity and yet people were still coming down the escalator.

-Dave