Big Day in the City

For Christmas, Kev got us two tickets to see Wynton Marsalis' Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra at the Kennedy Center, and yesterday was the day. My mom came over to stay with Daphne (Thanks, Mom!), and we headed into town in the afternoon. The plan: Park at the Kennedy Center, head to Red Onion Records, then to the National Gallery of Art, possibly go ice-skating in their sculpture garden, eat dinner at Jaleo, go back to the car to take off my snow boots and put on nice shoes, and enjoy some jazz. And it mostly worked out. Mostly. First problem, I forgot to bring the nice shoes. I left them at home, right next to the door. So, I would have to wear my snow boots into the Kennedy Center. Oh well. Not really such a bad thing. Probably nobody would pay attention to my feet anyway. Second problem, we didn't have time for the record store. Again, no big deal. We'll just have to go back. And I want to go back a lot more often. I LOVED having some City Time. People, buildings, action. It was great. I miss living in a city. Except for the traffic.

Anyway, after we parked the car at the Kennedy Center parking garage, we walked around and looked at it. It is really cool. Especially at night when it's all lit up. This was our first time to go inside, and it was pretty awesome. A shuttle took us from there to the Metro station, and we headed to Penn Quarter and the National Gallery of Art. We decided to ice skate:

It was so much fun, and probably pretty funny to watch. My center of gravity has changed since the last time I skated (about 9 or 10 years ago), and it took me a while to re-get the hang of it. Pretty soon, I was skating, and not doing too badly as long as there were no obstacles. I had a few near-misses with people who fell down in my path, but I somehow managed to get around them (very gracefully, I'm sure) and I didn't fall at all. Skating outside is really fun, and I recommend it. You can't do that in Texas. And we were lucky with the weather...it was probably about 40 and best of all - NO WIND! So it was a nice day to be outside.

After the skating, we wandered around the museum for a little while, but we'll have to go back becuse the place is huge and we only made it through one wing. We had to leave to make our reservation at Jaleo:

Oh, Jaleo! Jaleo is probably in my Top Ten favorite restaurants. It is Jose Andres' tapas bar. Everything I've ever had there is awesome. This time, we had bread and manchego, fried eggplant with honey, scallops with butternut squash puree, clementines, and pumpkin seeds, serrano ham fritters, and mushroom rice. It was all great, even the garnish on the cheese plate, which was some sort of magical apricot marinated in honey. Holy Cow. Amazing. And I didn't even know I LIKED apricots. Anyway, we were enjoying a very relaxing dinner, and were about to order dessert when I asked Kev to check the tickets to make sure the show was at 7:30, which we were both convinced it was. Well, turns out it started at 7:00. Oops. Um...No dessert.

We quickly paid for dinner and hurried to metro and caught the first train to L'Enfant, where we were supposed to switch trains and head to Foggy Bottom. Next train was nine minutes away. And it was at least a 10-15 minute ride to Foggy Bottom, plus a few blocks' walk to the Kennedy Center. It was 20 minutes to show-time. We did the math. And then we ran up to street level, and luckily Kev spotted a Holiday Inn where we managed to flag down a taxi. We got to the Kennedy Center as they were flashing the lights, got to our seats as they were ringing the bell, and I managed to make it to the bathroom and back with barely enough time to catch my breath before the show started. Whew! I never could have made it to the car to get my shoes.

The show was really great. We got to see some pretty incredible musicians in an amazing venue, and it was only partially frought with difficulty. An adventure in the city with Kev. Just what I needed.

It's been hard to get in a groove with all this weather. More ice is expected tonight and tomrrow, so school Wednesday is iffy. But in spite of this, I have managed to go to Curves 13 times this month, and do the WiiFit 15 times on my off-days from Curves. I have also made it through the whole month of January without forgetting my Project 365 photo of the day. So I'm giving January Tara an A. Bring on February. One step closer to spring.

Hope you had a good weekend. New poll coming soon, and I promise it won't be about grits. Naptime for Daphne...we'll see if it takes. I've got a Southern Living magazine with my name on it...