Mount Vernon - Day #3

We were ready to go by 8:15 - off to breakfast at Pain Quotidien in Old Town - NMac and I love this place, and now B and G do, too!   After the best latte and brioche ever, we headed south to Mount Vernon, about a 15-minute ride.  We learned at this moment that it is nearly impossible to make a left turn anywhere in Old Town...so frustrating!!!  We finally got onto the Parkway, looking all the while for fall foliage.  There wasn't too much to be found - everything was kind of dull - the only disappointment of our trip.

After getting tickets for the house tour, we watched a video and then walked around the grounds for about an hour and a half.  It was a beautiful day, and some guy took amazing pictures of the four of us standing in front of the house.  The house tour took about 1/2 hour, and then we had a quick lunch.  The next destination was the museum on the grounds, which I had never seen.  It was interesting and not overwhelming, thank goodness, since I was a bit tired by then. After checking out the gift shop (where I bought a replica Bastille key - Washington actually had one in the house given to him by the Marquis de Lafayette), we drove down to the grist mill and watched demonstrations of the making of cornmeal and the distilling of whiskey.  NMac, B, and G bought some cornmeal to take home, and then we rushed back to the hotel to freshen up for our cupcake and dinner expedition.  We took the subway to Rosslyn and then walked over the Key Bridge into Georgetown for some cupcakes.  By the time we got to the cupcake place, it was 6PM, and the line was pretty long.  We waited for about 20 minutes and then decided that we'd have to give it up if we wanted to get to the restaurant in time for our reservation (we had about a mile walk to get to the Founding Farmers restaurant).

Even though we were ON TIME for our reservation, we didn't get seated for 1/2 hour.  All of us were a bit perturbed, but the manager offered us free deviled eggs, fried green tomatoes, and homemade cornbread as a gesture of apology.  We ate every free morsel!!!!  Dinner was again incredibly good - and the carrot cake for dessert more than made up for missing a Georgetown cupcake.

We caught the metro at Foggy Bottom and got back to King Street at about 10:30.  NMac discovered that the layers of government bureaucracy extended to trying to consolidate two Metro cards into one - she would have had to go to the Pentagon station to do that - how ridiculous. 

Bed at 11PM - exhausted and SOOOO full.....