Adams Morgan

Part 3 of the adventure which began on Sunday, backdated from a few days later.

Adams Morgan, 2:30pm

I've walked from DuPont Circle, the heart of the neighborhood of the same name, to the corner of Columbia Road and 18th, the heart of Adams Morgan (no hyphen between those words, although I want to insert one).  It's not hard to get here; from the Circle walk north up Connecticut Avenue, and then veer right at the statue of General McLellan.

Veering left keeps you on Connecticut and will take you to Woodley Park; veering right brings you onto Columbia Road.  You can follow it all the way to the heart of Adams Morgan where I'm sitting now, and view all the sumptuous apartment buildings along the way.  Here are some of my favorites:

Look at this portal - isn't it great?  Of course, I could never afford to live here - it's condominiums, which sell for quite a hefty bit, according to the website.  Nevertheless, could I just note that the 24-hour front desk, "a rare find in DC" according to whoever wrote this website, is something that I enjoy at my humble abode in Southwest?  Suck it, Wyoming!

Don't think too hard, just look - arches, a terrace with window-boxes, a noble-looking seal, a roof garden with palm-ish looking plants, columns - might we be in Europe?  Might we be in an old palazzo in Rome?  Ah yes...

I like this portal too, but I was drawn to it by the lamps on either side of the door - look at those things!  I love wrought-iron lamps, lanterns, streetlights, and so on, but you could kill someone with these particular specimens.  I don't think I've seen spikes like that since I was in the torture chamber at Prague Castle.  Also, pumpkin!

This is Columbia Road, lined with gorgeous apartment buildings in which the rent is surely more than I make each month - before taxes.  But they are lovely, on the outside for sure, and most likely on the inside as well.

Once you pass the rows of fancy facades, you're in Adams Morgan's beating heart.  Adams Morgan is very young, very hip, and very ethnically diverse, and Columbia Road is lined with bistros, bars, restaurants, and shops of all sorts (one in particular made me grin, as it was called the Grill from Ipanema).  I am told that one weekend nights this area is also filled with the young and the "restless" (if you get my meaning), but since I haven't had any desire to be the target of a random stranger's alcohol-soaked libido I haven't ventured up on a weekend night, but rather a quiet Sunday afternoon.  And it's very quiet, which may be Nature's way of balancing out for all the noise unleashed last night - or maybe not.  Unless I summon up the courage to come up here some Friday or Saturday night, I'll never know.  Now my curiosity is piqued...

I nearly lived here, in the building across the street from where I sit (above) but although the neighborhood is lovely and the profusion of shops and entertainment venues enivable, I'm glad I didn't end up here for a number of reasons.  For one, there's no convenient Metro station here, and it's not close enough to work that I could walk, so transportation would have been a pain.  For another - and I share this concern with DuPont Circle - all the cafes and restaurants and bookstores and boutiques would present a temptation that my budget simply can't handle.  I impulse-bought two books in DuPont earlier ($8 a piece, so I figured I wasn't being that extravagant), but I know that living near all these opportunities to spend money would either bust my budget or, if I managed to remain aloof, make me feel like I was missing out.  There aren't those sorts of things in Southwest (dull but safe for the tight-budgeted); in this case, out of sight is out of mind.

I do have one more objection to Adams Morgan.  There are too many pigeons.

They're watching you...