(Day 1 | Day 2)

When the weekend rolled in, we also got: (1) nicer weather and (2) HELLA tourists. Since Christine and Karen had basically been scarred by the crowds at the Air & Space Museum, we kept it low-key and opted to not actually visit the Cherry Blossom Festival during peak.

TL;DR Taipei in Maryland, sweets tour of Georgetown, speakeasy uneasiness, AYCE KBBQ & shabu

(Also, I don’t have many photos from Saturday, so sorry!)

Saturday

We kicked of Saturday with xiaolongbao (小笼包) aka soup dumplings at JDS Shanghai Famous Food. This is my boyfriend’s parents’ favorite places to get XLB, and seeing as how they are Shanghainese, I trust their judgement. I also wowed Christine by taking charge and speaking Mandarin with the waitress. <casually brushes dirt off shoulder>

Someone once told my girls that there wasn’t good bubble tea (or boba, as Californians seem to be hellbent on calling it) so I took them to one of our most popular bubble tea joints in the area: Jumbo Jumbo (now also open in Germantown, which is where we wound up).

At that point, the girls and I headed into Georgetown to check out the [in]famous cupcake scene. The sun came out, so we actually felt warm for the first time during the visit as we walked down M Street. We didn’t totally escape the crowds though, as M Street is always full of shoppers and tourists in picturesque Georgetown. Our first stop was Georgetown Cupcake, which had a looooong line. We noped right out of there and evaded M Street to walk along the canal to try at Baked & Wired. Noped out of there too, although the line was a bit shorter. After all, Karen and Christine didn’t fly across the country to elbow folks in a line for half an hour!

So, to placate our sweet tooths, I brought us over to Olivia Macaron for some — you guessed it — macarons. It’s a really cute shop with very tasty macarons. (Even my vegan friend would make an exception and pretend that there weren’t egg whites in them.) However, they didn’t have samples for you to try like they usually do when I visit; probably a good move with the swarms of tourists.

Unfortunately for the girls, I had to meet up with some folks in the evening. They very loyally and supportively decided to stay by my side, despite me trying to get them to explore the gorgeous Georgetown waterfront or to find a more fun/highly reviewed restaurant in the area. (I met my people at a pretty plain sports bar-type place.) Thank you for waiting for me, with me, I am forever grateful that you two are better friends to me than most people I know. </sappy>

From there, we actually went to meet a blind date because why not? (#yoloswag) We went to The Gibson, which was actually a really cool, chic speakeasy with a pretty great cocktail menu. The only problems were that (a) the unmarked, unwindowed building was a sketchy spot for a blind date meeting (b) Karen and I aren’t really drinkers and (c) there wasn’t food, as this is primarily a cocktail lounge. LE SIGH. But I definitely recommend the venue to folks looking for a fun speakeasy in DC!

My allergies were really kicking in this day, and I wonder if I was also just having some cold symptoms because my building turned off the heat and I had been running on about 3 hours of sleep a night for the past few days, so I was pretty out of it when we got back to my apartment. It was getting late but we hadn’t had a proper dinner yet, so we decided to head back into Virginia for more all-you-can-eat Korean food! This time, we hit up Oegadgib, which does both AYCE barbecue and AYCE shabu-shabu. UH HELLO let’s go. We ate a lot here, and didn’t really have the same issues I’ve had with them in the past, so I was pretty glad.

But… by the end of the evening, I was shivering from cold/sleepiness and basically too sleep-drunk to drive us all back safely. Oops! At least I had the sense to stop the car and have my boyfriend drive us all to safety. I was feeling pretty crappy by the end of Saturday, not only because my head was foggy and I could barely breathe without coughing/sneezing, but also because I felt like I had made my honored guests walk and wait around a lot without much quality DC time or quality us time, and our plans to go out with my friends from Day 2 fell through as my body fell apart. Also, it was our last full day together, and I guess I had hoped we would get more out of it. But I think Day 4 made up for my shortcomings on Day 3, and I do hope that my dear friends (and boyfriend) can forgive me for being less pleasant than I usually try to be!