urban exploration | In Retrospect

I always feel like The Waitresses – Christmas Wrapping is stuck in my head on Christmas Eve as I dash to and fro possibly while bundled up too tight, but today was typical Virginia, where the weather was showing it can be bright and sunny and warm for the day. And for this I took advantage of some outdoor time, first by walking to coffee with my retired old man group, then by walking the waterfront in Old Town because I arrived too early for yoga, and finally by enjoying the waterfront at dusk after having a mid-afternoon dinner.

Back before the earth cooled, or at least in the pre-COVID era, a coffee shop opened across the street from my home, where I was living in a large apartment building before I settled down and moved into a house. This was Idido’s Coffee and Social. I actually wrote entire proposals while sitting at Idido’s.

Once I moved I started walking to Idido’s a few times a week to get out of the house as well as I was still working from home all the time. I started noticing one of my neighbors was meeting his friends there, mostly retired civil servants, once a week, and eventually he invited me to join them.

Well, I have long since gotten out of the habit of going to Idido’s, but my neighbor’s group has grown to include between ten and eighteen people, and I still show up once or twice a month. That’s what I did today. I didn’t have to leave early to go to work thankfully. Instead, I left early got head to yoga.

Months ago I started going to a new yoga studio in Old Town Alexandria. Usually I go with The Boss, other times I go by myself (today was maybe the once this month I will go alone). And being the next town over you never know how long, with metro DC traffic, it will take to get there and find parking. Today’s answer? About 17 minutes. Sometimes it’s 30 or 40 minutes. End result, I was early.

Yes, I know I’m droning on and on about this but there’s a point.

I walked out to the waterfront to a spot I have never experienced. Let’s call this “things to do while waiting for yoga.” On this point there was, until recently, an empty warehouse but now there is a city park. It has a great view. I took the photo above with my new phone, an iPhone 17 Pro that I figured would be great for penguin photos next month.

I tried to make a joke about penguins but it just wouldn’t fly.

A month ago I was persuaded to upgrade my phone for aforementioned penguins, in part because the camera is so impressive. Purely as demonstration, not necessarily of quality because nothing is great with full on electronic zoom, I offer you this.

A view of the Capitol from six miles distant – notice it’s just a zoom on the photo above, a separte photo. But still, it tells me I can zoom in on an emporer on the ice and have you, dear reader, see an emporer on the ice.

But enough of this. Yoga as great, mostly floor practice, lots of stretching, then I came home and took a nap.

Dinner was at 3pm on Ada’s on the River. They still had their lunch menu up which was fine, it’s great. Ada’s is a better value than going into DC for fancy food and has a more extensive menu than most places in Arlington

We had a full bottle of champagne rather than cocktails and glasses. The occasion seemed to call for it, and the $89 restaurant price of the Beau Joie seems to be not tooooo far off from the $59 Total Wine price of the Beau Joie (it wouldn’t have surprised me to find that it was $30 in the store, such is the usual markup).

They had James River oysters which we refer to as being good enough for a half dozen. We like our oysters a bit more saline and tighter and smaller; the Chesapeake and tributary oysters tend to be less saline and larger. But these were fine and Ada’s serves them with excellent accompaniments. We also had tuna tartare and a dark brioche bread.

Ada’s does a great job with mussels, served with bread of course in a tomato broth with some spice and dill. After oysters, tuna, and mussels, it seemed to order something starchy, so of course there was a side of lobster mac n cheese. Two pots of mussels were the same cost as the lobster mac n cheese.

In honor of Hungary I ordered a glass of Royal Tokaji Aszú 5 Puttonyos. And then the salted caramel chocolate souffle.

Image of man stirring caramel into a souffle

This was actually the only flop of the day, and it honestly wasn’t a serious flop. The server brought the souffle out with a tin of caramel, but the caramel was lacking in quantity and cold. It wouldn’t pour. So, when he cut open our souffle with a spoon and poured it, it wouldn’t pour, so our poor sad souffle was sitting there looking like molten chocolate until he ran to the kitchen and heated up the caramel. It was good and tasty, but the presentation would have been better if it was as intended. Instead, I’ll need to make it at home!

And that’s all for today’s activities outside of the home. Inside the home I’m rolling out puff pastry. More on that tomorrow, maybe. And I’ll talk about yoga.

This post is entitled why we go on cruises. It’s about the obvious. I’m the type of person – we’re the type of people – who actually enjoy doing things when we travel. We’re active. We run. We run in port. We walk across the Brooklyn Bridge to Kings County Distillery in the Navy Yard. We go on an architecture boat tour in Chicago. When we visit a city, we stay somewhere comfortable and wander around and try to be like locals. Well, we try. We walked to the top of Cadillac Mountain instead of driving. But we go on cruises. Why?

We go on cruises so we don’t drive each other nuts. We like to do certain things in the morning and we also appreciate a fair amount of downtime. Sometimes one relaxes while the other goes to the casino. We don’t like to haul our luggage back and forth constantly; instead, we want to pretend we’re home. We don’t want to sit in a place for a week or two or three weeks, at least not most of the time. We want to experience a place but also relax.

So let me start out by telling you how I started cruising.

In 2016, I took my daughters on a cruise. I drove to the cruise port with them and we sailed south for a week. Planned ports included Port Canaveral in Florida (a success, we visited Disney for the first time ever), Nassau in the Bahamas, and Freeport (fail, due to planned hurricane). Did I mention the hurricane? My worst experience at sea was my first one, the one where the ship was listing sideways as we skirted a Cat 1 hurricane off Cape Hatteras.

In 2017, I took them on a cruise with my mother. Or rather, we went on a transatlantic passage on Queen Mary 2. Again, the main reason I did this is because it allowed a degree of relaxation while also entertaining my family. It was to some degree tiring though – travel with family is often not about relaxation. We did go to Scotland though.

I went on one solo cruise on a ship called the Royal Clipper, and then I went on two more – one, another Transatlantic, on Celebrity Silhouette as a “first vacation since COVID,” and one on Queen Victoria at the edge of winter to Spain and Portugal. That last one was in many ways the best – we, meaning we and not my daughters, visited a number of different interesting ports and towns in Spain and Portugal. This is really where we established our cruising habits and learned some lessons.

Always dine in port, because the food in port is one of the strongest identifiers of a culture.

Always give yourself downtime. Don’t attempt to try every event on the ship. Remember, if you’re on a ship for more than a week, just as you do with work at home you also need a day off to sleep in, rest, and relax. Also, don’t drink heavily before a day where the captain is telling you that you will have rough seas.

And move into your cabin. Act as if you own it. Find that one spot on the ship you find relaxing and keep coming back to it. Watch the sunset, watch the waves change day after day. Look for whales and dolphins. And enjoy yourself.

Happy Christmas Eve dinner – seafood and yoga

Why we go on cruises