Washington, DC. Day 2. No Wine, Cocktails.

We woke up Monday morning too late to go downstairs and have breakfast.  While that was sad, it was a nice change from getting up super early with Hallie!  We got ready for the day, and Tzvi left for work around 9.  I didn’t have to be at anything until around 1, so I went to the gym and then headed out to walk around. I got my free underwear at Victoria’s Secret.  The coupon was expiring that day, so I’m glad I got that in, even though the cost of Ubering to the store was more than the underwear was worth.  Afterwards I met Tzvi for coffee at Compass Coffee a block from his office.  

At 1pm we had a ‘networking lunch’ where I guess people met each other, but the JNF people mainly sat with each other. We’re a friendly bunch. After lunch there were some panels, Russell Robinson (JNF’s CEO) spoke, and we had some regional breakout groups. After that we had our ‘night activity’ which involved taking a bus to District Winery. I’m pretty sure it was the first winery in DC, but I wouldn’t know because we didn’t actually do anything at the winery except eat dinner and socialize. I should add that this conference is ‘kosher style’ so no, that winery was not kosher, and no, neither is the food. There was a separate table of kosher food. How nice for us. A bunch of us got tired (read: bored) and ubered home before everyone else. It was nice, but a little long.

Tzvi: I took an Uber to work because I was too lazy to figure out the public transport.  It was about 12 minutes and $8, and then when I got there one of the partners told me he does that walk every day.  Oh well.  Our firm’s DC office is beautiful - much nicer than our NY office.  My office in NY has a view of the east river, which is nice, but the view of the White House from the DC office’s rooftop deck wasn’t bad either.  It was a busy day and I ended up working until 9:00.  

For dinner I ordered from a restaurant called Beefsteak, which is a Jose Andres fast casual restaurant.  Maybe I ordered the wrong thing, but I did not particularly like my food.  I ordered a gazpacho soup topped with some weird vegetables, and a veggie bowl called The Eden, that had Quinoa, edamame, green beans, broccoli, zucchini, cilantro sauce, garlic yogurt, leafy greens, cucumber salad, scallions, sprouts, sesame seeds and lemon honey dressing.  So basically a lot of raw vegetables, which I guess is the theme of this place - vegetable forward.  It was just weird and not particularly good.

We met back at the hotel around 9:30 and went to the lobby to get a drink.  We had our pick of the downstairs lobby bar or the bar at the fancy restaurant upstairs overlooking the lobby.  We chose upstairs.  I think the giant chandelier at the center of the lobby is made from the organ that was once in the church that this building housed.  Pretty cool.  If it wasn’t clear already, this hotel is super hipster.  The restaurant upstairs is called A Rake’s Progress and the bar is called A Rake’s Bar.  Sounds more like the name of a poem than a restaurant.  Tzvi ordered a fancy gin drink with lots of ingredients that also had an obnoxiously hipster name and was basically just a gin and tonic.  Not that he didn’t really like it.  They said the gin was from some local producer.  I had a peach julep that came in a really cool cup and was very strong, but tasty.  We sat for a bit just enjoying being out, alone, on a Monday night, having cocktails.  Then we went back to our room and went to sleep, because, let’s face it, we’re not that cool.