Friday May 9th 2025 - Work trip to DC and fun trip to Toronto - Day 4, DC wrap up and flying to Toronto - urban walks

Wrapping up in DC.  I tried a very elegant bakery near the hotel, Tette Bakery.  Although it isn’t setup physically at all like a Panera Bread, it’s really a very fancy Panera Bread in terms of menu and food.  My sausage breakfast sandwich had (by request0 a beautiful soft cooked egg which Panera no longer offers but was let down by a hard crunchy half green tomato slice that shouldn’t have been put on there.

I attended my last conference session here.  It was really fun actually because the presenter was irreverent and charismatic.  Certainly the only presentation that had more than the most forced chuckle of humor.  I stopped back at the hotel (late checkout appreciated so I didn’t have to use bellman to watch my bags this morning) and get ready to head out.

It’s been an amazing 3 days in DC. Great weather, clean enjoyable city experiences, nice people interactions overall.  For a big East Coast city, visits don’t get much better than this for me.  But 3 days was plenty.  I’m hopeful Toronto is a little quieter and less honky than here and it will be a relaxing return to home getting on the train Sunday morning.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sunday May 16th - Mohican State Park - Near Loudonville OH - Trail loop of 11 miles, about 1400 feet elevation gain

Image
 This was an epic long hike.  I had been to this park once, by myself in October of 2019 I think.  I did a beautiful walk from the covered bridge (which is the central part of the trail network for many) to the fire tower and back. This gigantic loop hike from AllTrails however was a huge connect the dots adventure from a big dam, to Lyons Falls, through Hemlock Gorge and a few other park features ending, unexpectedly for us, at the very bottom of the dam with 175 stairs leading back to the top near our parked car.   The weather was warm but mild and nearly perfect for the entirety of our hike.  There were quite a few cars parked at the various trailhead parking lots but the park was so large and our route so ambitious and spread out that there wasn’t anywhere on the trail that we saw more than maybe 2 families together.  All together we did see enough dogs to fill a medium size dog pound though! It seemed like every couple or family had at least open canin...
Read more

Wednesday May 7th 2025 - Work trip to DC and fun trip to Toronto - Day 2, DC conference - urban walks

Image
I was ready to go in the morning, recharged after a fun but long day Tuesday.  We went to the same bagel shop as the day before and my manager tried the New Jersey staple of the Pork Roll sandwich and I had the same for the 2nd day in a row.  It’s rare to fine pork roll at all outside the NYC metro area and even rarer to find some place that gets all the details right with salt, pepper and ketchup.  Pearl’s is a very cute bagel place and they even have nice outdoor seating like a little bistro or something.  Very unusual for a small shop. As soon as we went up the escalator into the main hall, it was apparent that this was not as modest a gathering as I might have imagined.  There seemed to be a ton of people milling around.  We attended one early break-out session before the keynote session started.  The keynote probably serves mentally, though not officially, as the start of the conference.  That first break-out was ok but I didn’t really get m...
Read more

March 29 - April 1, Memphis and Camping near Nashville

Image
By Brian Gilbar We both woke up on Sunday a bit congested (I suspect from the casino air) and it's also spring allergy time so we took a bit of time getting up.  We did one load of laundry while getting ready to head out.  We stopped at Zaxby's (chicken place) in Collierville for breakfast/lunch before a hike.  I had never been to one before.  The chicken was delicious but everything was quite salty.  Probably good before a long hike to have extra salt in our bodies! We then headed to do a 7 mile hike at Herb Parsons Lake.  The trail goes around the lake.  It was quite chilly at first, about 49 degrees and quite windy.  We had decided to wear shorts as it was supposed to get up to 68 degrees today.  It did warm up eventually.  The trail was beautiful and we didn't see too many people, although there was a mix of hikers, bikers and runners.  Chris had been on this trail before when he lived in Memphis, probably 7 or 8 years ago, ...
Read more