East coast bound

Day 1 | welcome to D.C.

Our family trip to the east coast has finally arrived! The family left Friday and Dan and I had our flight Saturday morning.

We left Sunny, fresh California at 6:45 am 

and headed 3 hours south to Austin for a 1 hour layover where we entertained ourselves however we could 

and then 3.5 hours north to D.C.  We dreaded the long flight but ended up laughing and sleeping the whole time which was awesome.

Once we got to the airport we had to take a shuttle to the Metro and then ride the Metro to DuPont Circle where our friends live.

We met them at the station and walked back to the apartment to drop off our luggage.

The walk was so beautiful with all the brick homes and unique buildings but man, I did not expect such crazy humidity! We got to the apartment which looked like something straight off of Pinterest and then met up with the fam for dinner at Levante's, a Mediterranean restaurant. Dan and I split an appetizer plate which was super good. 

It had dolma, breaded fried kaser cheese, dill and cheese stuffed phyllo,fried eggplant and zucchini.

We also split a Turkish Pide which is like a bigger version of Arab meat pies I grew up eating called sfiha.  Our pide had ground lamb, tomato, onion, peppers feta on it. Really really good food and not pricey at all. a group of 9 of us came to $100.

On our way home we walked past a family of musicians performing on the street which was so awesome. There's something so amazing about seeing people play instruments with so much passion.  We took the metro as far as we could to the cars then drove the rest of the way to Baltimore. We were all pretty tired and got in bed and then my brother-in-law started telling us about a convenience store that is open 24 hours and makes fried chicken to order. Obviously we had to go. So at 1:30am we got out of bed and went to Royal Farms. It was a little store that looked like an AmPm inside only with a deep fryer. You order the food yourself on a screen then take it up to pay while they make it. 

I got chicken biscuit sliders, cole slaw and wedges and we ate it in the car on the way home like it was our last meal. So unbelievably good and I don't even like fried chicken but this was AMAZING. My mom uses old bay when she makes hers but these guys smothered it and it was so freaking good. We went home and promised not to let each other do that again and fell asleep. My b.i.l. wrote up a 5 page itinerary for our entire trip so there will never be a boring moment.