Posted on Jan 28th 2009 by ParkCityJS.
Day 1: Landed in Washington DC, and caught a cab to my boyfriend’s cousin’s house in Bethesda. We spent the afternoon chilling out, and had a few beers. Later that night, we went out to downtown Bethesda, where we had a half pitcher of white sangria at a nice Mexican restaurant. We walked to the Hyatt, and had one more drink at a great little martini bar there, and then headed back.
Day 2: Breakfast at the Congressional Country Club with a couple friends, and then headed in to DC to pick up our inauguration tickets from the DNC headquarters. On the way there, we saw Obama’s motorcade go by (cool!). We got to the DNC headquarters, and were invited up to the office of Howard Dean.
Later, we went up to Georgetown, and visited the Georgetown University campus. Then out for a couple of brews and lunch at Toombs. After lunch, we headed back to downtown DC, the Sofitel, where we stayed for the rest of the trip. We met up with my boyfriend’s sister, and went to the bar in the sofitel, “le bar”, for a drink and dinner. To bed early, big day tomorrow!
Day 3: Inauguration day. left the hotel about 8:00 am for the trek to the mall, where we got trapped in a huge crowd of people, and it became apparent we were not going to make it through the gates in time. To make a long story short, we did NOT make it in to see the swearing in, but instead, watched it on a huge jumbo tron, within the masses of people, and it was the coolest thing ever. People were crying, and hugging complete strangers, and it was a feeling of pure joy! It took us a couple hours after that to make it back to our hotel. It has NEVER felt so good to sit down! We had a couple beers and lunch at “le bar” and headed up to the room for a nap.
Later that night, we were invited by some friends of to the Western Ball. We got all ready for that, and caught a cab to meet them at the Hyatt Garden hotel. We had one drink there, then headed for the convention center. There was SO MUCH traffic, we ended up walking about 4 blocks in the freezing cold (I was wearing a dress and sandals!). The ball was neat, good music, including a live performance from Jennifer Lopez. The best part was that Vice President Joe Biden showed up, gave a little speech, had a dance… and about 15 minutes later, President Obama showed up with Michelle! We were probably 50 yards away… very cool.
After the ball, we ran in the freezing cold across the street to the Renaissance hotel. There were SO many people, and not enough cabs. We sat and had a couple more drinks there at the bar at the Renaissance, and finally, got a car back to the hotel, where we went to bed about 3 AM.
Day 4: We got up and just did a little walking around DC. I was amazed how CLOSE everything actually was… and at how far we had to walk the previous day to get the same place that was really only a couple of blocks away! We had lunch with a friend, then caught a car to the BWI airport!
Overall, it was an AMAZING trip. It was so cool to be a part of it all, a part of what will surely go down as one of the most important inaugurations in history!
