I moved to Arlington for grad school six years ago now. It’s so hard to believe I’ve been down here that long – time has absolutely flown by. I instantly fell in love with this area and am still blown away by how many cool things there are to do in Arlington, D.C. and even occasionally (usually begrudgingly) Maryland.

I’ve gotten to a couple Nats games already this season. Nats Park is a great, new stadium with some awesome stadium food options too! I’m a fan of the Ben’s Chili Bowl spot, but might have to try out Shake Shack on my next trip there now that I’ve finally gone to their restaurant. I was lucky enough to go to opening day here during the Nats inaugural season and have attended several games a year since then, even getting to sit in the Diamond Club seats once.

This season I caught a Saturday afternoon game with friends in a packed stadium to watch the Nats beat the Phillies and got out of work for a weekday game as part of a department outing. We got to see Strasburg pitch, but unfortunately it wasn’t his day as the Nats lost to the Padres.

My parents made a trip down to D.C. to visit in late May, and having visitors is always a good excuse to get to play tourist in my own city. They’ve been coming down for years now, so we’ve already done most of the usual touristy things and joke that most of our visits are planned around food, but with all the great restaurants down here, you can’t go wrong doing that! We ate at some of our usual favorites, Rhodeside Grill, RiRa and Brooklyn Bagel Bakery (best bagel spot in the greater D.C. region!). We also got a deep dish and a thin crust at District of Pi Pizzeria, which my Dad had never been to and wanted to try after I’d been raving about it for some time. It didn’t disappoint. Their specialty seems to be the deep dish pizzas, but both of ours were delicious. The service left a bit to be desired, but fortunately the pizza was so good it made up for that.

On our past visits to the National Mall, we’ve never made it all the way down to the Capitol Building so I decided to start on that end this time. I get to run around this area a lot and it’s such a great site to take in, so I was excited for them to get to see it up close finally. I waited too long to try and get tickets for a tour unfortunately, but we walked all the way around the outside and passed by the Supreme Court and Library of Congress as well.

My favorite museum to visit in D.C. has always been the Newseum. Working so close to the National Mall now, I have no excuse not to visit some of the Smithsonian museums I still haven’t managed to get to in my six years here. I’ll share some future posts on my experiences at them and which ones I think are most worth visiting.