Fairmont and Monuments of DC

When David came home for his 2 week R&R we had one trip planned out: Washington DC. Since 2000, David has been visiting the city to attend the Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon which features universities from around the world that compete in building the most energy efficient home. This was my second year attending. I have to say that I find it funny that he planned his R&R around the decathlon and not our anniversary. Ah well, we celebrated it anyway.

To travel down to the city, we decided to take the Amtrak Northeast Regional. I had never taken a train in the US (took one from Madrid to Toledo and then from Zurich to Paris) and I thought it would be cheaper than flying and a lot less stressful than driving. We were out by 6:45AM and arrived in DC just after 2PM. I was not proud of myself at this point because I carelessly forgot to plan how we would get from Union Station to the hotel. I figured a taxi would get us there but the line was too long. We finally hopped on the Circulator which got us to our hotel for $1 per person. Unfortunately the first bus we got on didn’t seem to want to go anywhere, so we were placed on another bus (this will not be the end of our Circulator troubles). After 20 minutes of riding through downtown, we made it to our stop and the Fairmont was only 2 blocks walking. Thankfully we had a light load of luggage.

We were greeted at the front desk, although it took me a minute to figure out which agent was going to help us, as they all had their heads down. I have to say, since working in the hotel industry, I have become a lot more aware of service points. But once we began the check in process, the agent was very friendly. She wished us a happy anniversary and informed us that we had been upgraded to a corner suite on the top floor. Sweet!

The room was beautiful and very comfortable. Not even 10 minutes after we arrived, there was a knock on the door and there was sparkling wine and chocolate covered strawberries for us, from the concierge desk! They were delicious and bubbly.

Our first night, we stayed in and ordered room service: salad and pasta Bolognese for me; 2 French onion soups and a steak salad for David.

On Sunday, we ventured out in the morning for the Decathlon. The weather was…meh. It wasn’t raining and it wasn’t too hot, but boy was it muggy. It made the walking pretty uncomfortable. This year the Decathlon was near the tidal basin, so it was about a mile walk from the hotel.

Last year I took a ton of pictures for David so that he could document the event. This year, he had his video camera, so mine went untouched. Unfortunately, David was less than thrilled with this year’s contenders. What he’s loved about this event, in the past, was seeing what new ideas and technology was out there that could help make a home as energy efficient and zero energy as possible. He has hopes of building our house to be energy efficient and I’m excited at the idea of not having to use fossil fuels! This year, though, it seems that David has run out of being able to learn anything. Seriously, this guy reads book after book and article after article about the subject of green building and I really think that he knows everything that needs to be known in order to build green homes. So, he got bored pretty easily. We saw about 10 homes and then called it a day.

We were near the monuments, so we got a chance to see the new Martin Luther King monument and the World War II monument.

Very nice.

That night, we went to Filomena’s in Georgetown for our anniversary dinner. The concierge Kevin was nice enough to make us a reservation. Glad we did too because for a Sunday night, it was very busy! We were sat just 5 minutes after our reservation and our drink orders were taken. Because of the dimly lit restaurant, and that this was a dinner I just wanted to enjoy with my husband of 3 years, I decided not to bring my camera. We settled on simple drinks (diet coke for him, Malibu and diet for me) because we had the wine back in the hotel room.

For a starter I had the GIARDINO DI L’EDEN: salad of crisp frisee greens tossed with chopped green apples, glazed walnuts and dried tart cherries and served with a gorgonzola cheese-&-apple dressing. The salad description looked extremely tasty; however the salad itself was drenched in dressing, which is not my favorite. I ended up eating the apples, walnuts and cherries and picked at the greens. For an entrée, I had the MANICOTTI: tubular pasta made by our pasta mammas stuffed with blended ricotta, mozzarella and parmesan cheeses; topped and baked with the tomato sauce and melted mozzarella cheese. This dish was so delicious. There was a generous amount of mozzarella on top and the sauce was generously poured and oh so sweet. I was never a huge fan of ricotta but it was so smooth and creamy. Ah, I can taste it now as I write this. David had a special of the day which was a New York sirloin served with mozzarella cheese and tomatoes (caprese style). The steak was cooked perfectly rare which I found surprising for an Italian restaurant. Overall, the dinner was quite good although it didn’t blow us away. Because we had booked through the concierge, they gave us 20% off of our meal, and I had an Open Table gift card so our meal ended up being rather affordable. A lovely night with my lovely husband. We even walked around Georgetown which is such a cute neighborhood of DC. I would love to go there again if only to visit this area.

For dessert for the day, we stopped at the Trader Joe’s and picked up some chocolate sorbet. Delicious and refreshing.

We ended up leaving a day early to go home.And the trip to the train station was a hoot. Remember how the Circulator wasn’t working on our trip in? Well, we hopped on the one by the hotel and all of a sudden, it won’t start! So into a taxi we went to make it to Union Station on time. The trip certainly didn’t turn out as we had planned but just being together made it the best trip in a long, long time.

Tagged as: Fairmont, monuments, solar decathlon, washington dc