Belated Birthday

I wanted to do a little write up of my fun 4-day birthday weekend because my mom came out to DC so spend it with me! I kidded my mom for several months (actually closer to a year+) that she would never come out to DC to visit me though I thought she would really like the city. So she decided to come out to see me for my 29th birthday (my birthday was on a Thursday). She flew into the Baltimore-Washington airport on Wednesday night (after a slight delay which resulted in me driving 15 miles to the airport and then circling the airport for 15 miles) and we went to the hotel in Bowie and order delicious pizza from a local chain (she even got anchovies on half!). On my actual birthday, we went to my favorite museum: The Smithsonian American Art Museum and Portrait Gallery. I got to show her all my favorite paintings (and sculpture) as well as a cool exhibit of color photographs from the 1940s. And then we had a yummy birthday dinner at DuClaw (in which mom got ribs, of course).  The next day it was back down to the Mall to go to the National Gallery which is chock-full of beautiful paintings, but a little overwhelming!  We were happy to stumble into a special exhibit that featured the still life painting of the Dutch painter Willem van Aelst (which were really gorgeous and featured a lot of atypical items for a still life).  After a long day of looking at paintings, we went out to dinner at the Silver Diner (which means that I have taken all my visitors to the Silver Dinner).  Saturday was more low-key (I don't think mom anticipated the huge amount of walking that we did the first two days), as we went to Silver Spring and walked through the farmer's market before going to the AFI Silver (my favorite place!) to see Some Like It Hot.  We followed the movie with a tasty lunch as Nado Peri Peri before heading back to the hotel for a swim.  And finally on Sunday, we had lunch at a great Indian place before stopping by my new apartment and then heading down to the Kennedy Center to see Shear Madness (which was really good!).  I took mom back to the airport on Monday morning.  I was sad to see her go but I was very happy that she came out!  And here are some pictures from her visit:
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