I bought around ten travel magazines in order to do some research on my future travels. First thing I did when I got home was grab the largest magazine I bought (which was the British Edition of Condé Nast Traveller), plotted it on my bed and aimlessly flipped it open to something very, very familiar. It was a photo of the Rosslyn metro stop in Washington DC (Pictured above, as the world’s third longest escalator!). I stopped and  stared at it for two seconds as this reel of memories played through my head. I immediately started to flip through the pages of the spread until eventually, I just smacked the magazine against my face and started to weep. I miss this place! I’ve lived in so many places but DC is my home, the only place I can call home. I instant messaged someone I grew up with, who still lives there and he scoffed, “What’s so great about DC?!”
I remembered my best friends and I lying to our parents to sneak off into the city and try to go to every single museum and monument we could. I remembered being a complete asshole of a teenager and mocking every foreign tourist group we ran into. I remembered the chaos of September 11th in DC. I remembered when the only Urban Outfitters was in Georgetown and how going to it made you really, really cool. I remembered the rush of seeing some of my favorite bands(Le Tigre, Thievery Corporation, Ted Leo and The Pharmacists, Bouncing souls..) play for free at Operation: Ceasefire. I remembered the unnecessary/ridiculous amounts of security everywhere. I remembered how many times we could go to each art museum and never get bored of it. I remembered how important being in DC made me feel as a young girl. I remembered how much me and my two best friends cried when Gore lost to Bush in 2000, and the disappointment of the 2004 elections. I remembered watching my dad play soccer every Tuesday and Thursday in the heart of DC. I remembered the CIA being closer to me than the White House was. I remembered the amazing architecture within the suburban areas, and the amazing neoclassical architecture of the government buildings. Ughhhh, so many awesome memories.

The last time I was there was over this past summer for my sister’s baby shower. I was too busy to do any non-baby related things there, so I guess you could say the last time I was really in DC was well over a year ago. I don’t consider DC to be somewhere I’d like to live anytime soon, but I’m pretty set on living there when I’m ready to settle down. Word up to DC!

xoxox