Hot Town, Summer in the City

Happy Independence Day!!!!
Yes, 'tis the season in DC for barbecues, afternoons by the pool, hordes of sidewalk-hogging, Metro-crowding tourists rushing to the Mall in throngs and scorching summer days. I have a love-hate relationship with DC summers: I love those lazy afternoons at the pool and the fact that I can walk around outside without a constant, rainy chill in the air, but I cannot stand the hordes of tourists that make daily life slightly more annoying and the oppressive heat and humidity that sometimes make multiple daily showers a necessity. In addition to the omnipresent tourists, a new group, Hill interns, descends upon the city, and the interns make themselves a very visible presence throughout the city.

One of the highlights of DC summers is 4th of July weekend. In terms of total celebrations, I would argue that no city does it better than DC (although the Boston firework show is, in my opinion, better). There is truly nothing like being on the National Mall with several thousand of your closest friends (I don't know what the final count was last night).

Before I get to the official 4th of July festivities, I'll go through what we did the rest of the weekend to make it such a fantastic time. On Friday night, the group met up at the Sculpture Garden, as per usual, for jazz (which has been Lauren's and my weekly summer tradition since last summer). On Saturday night, Molly had a bunch of people, including Alexandra (who was in for the weekend from NY) and Jordan and Nick (two of Molly and Alex's friends from Dalton who will be in the city until the end of this week) over to her place for fruit pizza and Kings. It was a lot of fun, especially getting the chance to meet two more Daltonians!

On Sunday, we went to the Nats-Pirates game. Dan and I already had tickets (which ended up being AMAZING seats about 25 rows behind the Pirates dugout), which, unfortunately, were directly in the sun, so all vanity quickly went out the window. We went up to visit the rest of the crew for a few innings in the nosebleeds in the hopes that we would be in the shade (which definitely did not happen). Afterward, the girls and the Dalton crew headed down to the Southwest Waterfront because our friend Joelle was in Elegy for Rose, a short play about Tennessee Williams' sister, Rose. Joelle did a fantastic job, and it was a good excuse to explore an area that I had never been to before. I quickly went home and showered (to wash off both the puddles of sweat from the game and the rain from the unexpected downpour that we got caught in) so that I could meet up with Dan and a few of his friends from home in Georgetown. We grabbed a drink at Martin's, and then Dan and I split off from the group to take a trip down memory lane and go back to Tombs (for whatever reason, he knew that I would want to go there haha). It's funny, because the place itself never changes, but they just funnel through class after class of college juniors and seniors, so as an alum, it feels really weird to go back (particularly during the summer, when there are so few people there to begin with). I was reminded of how wonderful Tombs is when our waitress, so apologetic that it took a little bit of time for our drinks to come (I was not actually upset at all), informed us that our drinks were on the house. Score.

On Monday (oh, how I love bonus weekend days!), Alex had the group over to his house for a 4th of July BBQ. I was elated at the chance to have one of Alex's delicious homemade veggie burgers and some home brew, and, as always, there was great company. The other girls and I left around 6ish to head down to the Mall, wanting to stake out a large enough spot for our growing group. We found a great spot on the northwest corner of the Washington Monument, so we had a great view of the fireworks. Our group of about 20 people had a great time enjoying the best spectacle that DC has to offer. And, as was the case on July 5th of last year, getting back to work this morning was a little bit tough.

Here are some pictures from the weekend:
The Dalton Crew

Some casual Saturday night Kings at Molly's

Dalton and Georgetown- worlds collide!!!

Dan and I looking gross and sweaty at the Nats game

Georgetown loves