On Monday, May 18, we arrived at the Alexandria City Marina (next to Founders Park )where we planned to dock for the next three nights. Our good friends, Greg and Lynda Gallagher, who live in Alexandria (on the way to Mt. Vernon) graciously invited us to stay with them which we gladly accepted. Lynn has known Greg since they were in 7th grade and she finds him endlessly entertaining!
You won’t see the usual D.C. pictures here as we spent our time with our friends and revisiting a few of our favorite places, some of which are not on the traditional tourist path.
Docking in Old Town Alexandria allowed us to walk the historic streets and eat at some of their really good restaurants. We met a good friend for lunch in Old Town. Judith Chew brought us a unique boat gift which she and her recently departed husband, Richard, had a lot of fun with on their beautiful Hinkley sailboat. The “fun-erator” is a specially contrived sling for shooting water balloons. We can hardly wait to use it on her stepson, Stephan and his wife, Kathy when they visit us in Montreal!
We had a few places that we really wanted to visit including the National Arboretum, the Capital Hill neighborhood where Lynn used to live and Eastern Market. Greg loaned us his fancy new car (Fiat 500 Abarth) instructing us to be absolutely sure not to put a ding in it. If we did, we should just “get it over with” and total the damn car! Needless to say, we were extremely careful that day!
Lynn really wanted to see the brilliant azalea covered hillsides at the National Arboretum but we were just a little too late. Fortunately, the dogwoods were in full bloom and they were outstanding!
We drove by Lynn’s old home on Capital hill - such a cool area. Hers is in the first two pictures The third shows homes in the neighborhood.
We stopped at Eastern Market (a wonderful old indoor, outdoor market on Capital Hill) to buy flowers and cheese for our hostess. Lynda and Greg were so good to us with Lynda cooking two delicious dinners after getting up at 4:30 each morning and working all day teaching school! Thank you Lynda and I can’t believe we don’t have a picture of you with which to grace our blog!
Lynn spent Wednesday morning getting her hair cut while Jonny and Greg donned their cycling “outfits” and rode up to Mt. Vernon and back. What a handsome pair they made!
Afterwards we had lunch at an “old favorite” chili restaurant called Hard Times Café on King St which was within walking distance of the first home that we owned.
Greg dropped us off at the Metro so we could go to Dupont Circle and visit the Phillips Collection, Lynn’s favorite museum in D.C. Out of all the outstanding museums we could visit, we chose this one and we were not disappointed in the least!
On Wednesday night, after a yummy pizza dinner in Old Town, Greg dropped us off so we we could spend the night on the boat and get an early start the next morning.
We had the most wonderful visit and look forward to the next time we can see these very special friends!
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