Day 11: Wilimington to Felton, DE, with a side dish of Washington, DC

We’d planned on sleeping in a bit in Wilmington, enjoying Denise’s sure-to-be yummy breakfast and lingering over coffee, because we only had a short trip planned for today. Unfortunately, we had to leave early to jaunt on over to the specialty camera store so Anja could see if the broken ($1000, borrowed) lens on her camera was only maybe, perhaps, pleasedeities! a broken ($20) filter.

After the delicious breakfast (oatmeal! With berries! And nuts! And sugar!), we headed over to the camera store, where they told Anja it was, indeed, just the filter, cleaned off the broken glass with compressed air, and sold her a new filter. You’d think we would have left that store completely relieved and jubilant, but unfortunately Anja was not terribly impressed with the acumen and knowledge of the store employees, so we were still going to have to wait and see what happened when she took pictures.

Anja was particularly concerned because she could hear some sort of noise when she focused the lens, which hadn’t been there before. I didn’t hear a damn thing, though, so *I* was relieved!

We headed rather uneventfully down to Felton, DE, where we were staying at the home of the lovely Becky and Chris (although he probably wouldn’t appreciate being referred to as “lovely”…I mean, of course, the manly and hardcore Chris) and their three awesome cats. We then spent an hour and a half trying to figure out how to drive to Washington, DE, and where to park. It’s a big city, folks. We settled on parking at the suburban metro station and taking it in to the Mall, where we were meeting some Washingtonians for dinner.

We got to the Mall, I took some pictures, and then we had to get to the meeting place for dinner. We gave ourselves lots and lots of time to walk really very few blocks, because it was Very Hot. Extremely Hot. We Thought We Might Die Hot. We finally dragged our exhausted and melting asses to the corner of 7th and E, where we were supposed to be meeting our friends, and saw neither them nor any sign of any restaurant, let alone the restaurant they had named.

So we called them. Turns out? Washington is organised into quadrants, and there are four of almost every intersection. That’s right, there are 4 – FOUR – intersections of 7th and E in Washington, D.C. I have seen some bad city planning in my time, but this? Is off the charts. Good. God.

Anyway, in case you can’t see it coming, turned out we were in the northwest quadrant, and needed to be in the northeast quadrant. Or vice versa? Regardless, we had to haul our asses through the burning son for another 10 blocks to get to the proper intersection, where we finally had good food, lovely sangria, and had a great time with our friends. Then we drove back to Felton (and by “we”, I mean the lovely macho, manly Chris – for which my right knee was tremendously grateful!) and fell into an exhausted stupor.