On 10/5/16 1:50 PM, wrote:
On Fri, 30 Sep 2016 11:38:15 -0400, Keyser Soze
wrote:

I had plans for this weekend that will take me
out of town.

If you are looking for a good and interesting restaurant between Dunkirk
and Ridge, I suggest Jerry's Place,

We were at Mama Lucia until pretty late and went straight to the
Hilton near Solomans. I thought about you when I drove through
Huntingtown tho. Maybe next time.

DC is still an interesting place. I fell back into the groove right
away. (AKA the crack of the ass)
It is funny that "aggressive driving" will get you arrested in SW
Florida but in DC it is just "driving". I was talking to some of the
reunionees and the comment was "if you leave 5 car lengths at 50 MPH,
3 cars will pull into the gap and another might just pass through at
high speed".
My wife wanted to walk through a "corn maze" but the closest I could
do was drive through a "government maze" around the capitol. Between
the one way streets, "no turn" intersections, construction and
security barriers it took 20 minutes to get from The Dubliner to South
Capitol street and you could walk it in 5. Then I ran into baseball
trafffic.Yikes.
We did get to see Chinatown ... twice. Judy asked where all the
Chinese people were.
Once I got across the bridge and got to Suitland Parkway it was smooth
sailing all the way to Southern Md.
The reunion was interesting. It was a pretty subdued crowd but it was
good seeing all of the guys. Harry would be impressed by the
credentials of the attendees and there was a good representation of
professionals. The guys who seemed the happiest were the ones who
dropped out of college tho. One guy was retired from the telephone
company, one was a plumbing contractor who was a millionaire, there
was the guy who wrote speeches for 4 presidents and me.
I am not a huge fan of the "capitol hill" Marriott. It takes a pretty
bad grasp of geography to say Florida Avenue is on capitol hill and we
were really looking at the switching yard north of Union station.
http://gfretwell.com/ftp/View%20from...Cap%20Hill.jpg
These boys do need to put a little more "fun" in their functions. I
may be working on that for next time. For the money we spent in DC I
could rent out a whole motel here on the beach and maybe another one
across the street on the bay side in case some folks want to drag a
boat.
My friends in Dunkirk are doing great and we had a good visit. I also
had a good time in Ridge with the family.
We wrapped it up at National Harbor. I recommend the Westin. We were
overlooking the harbor and the big Ferris wheel.
http://gfretwell.com/ftp/view%20from%20the%20Westin.jpg
You get a good look at DC from the top
http://gfretwell.com/ftp/DC%20from%2...ol%20Wheel.jpg




If we're going to a museum or a show of some kind on the weekend, I'll
drive into DC, but mostly to get there, I hop on the $4.00 Keller
commuter bus, aka the "Killer" bus.
If we're going to see the Nats, we'll drive up to the Metro stop and hop
the train...which lets us off a couple of blocks from the ballpark.

Chinatown, sadly, seems to be undergoing gentrification, which means the
inexpensive housing and low shop rents and family restaurants and
groceries are disappearing.

I read where the huge MGM hotel/casino complex is scheduled to open
later this year at National Harbor. I can't figure out the draw for the
hotel, though. It's hard to believe that casino customers will fill it,
and there's no easy transport to the other side of the river for access
to DC. Boat taxis? Gondolas? A magic walkway?

I finally got to Le Petit Cafe in Branford, a suburb of New Haven. It
was very nice. I had the rack of lamb. www.lepetitcafe.net/
There's no question it really is one of the best restaurants in the
country and not horribly expensive.