This isn't my first cat café post - cue in my previous posts on New York's Meow Parlour and Paris' Café des Chats. It's not even my first post about Crumbs and Whiskers - see post on the launch of its kickstarter campaign. But it is my first post on DC's eagerly anticipated cat café since it opened. And it's my first post since actually going there!! My friend Cecile who writes The Worldly Bites has Gentlemeow Club member status so we snagged 2 weeknight spots during opening month and went to go play with the kittiens last night. Let me take you through our experience at Crumbs and Whiskers... Cat café is actually a bit of a misnomer when it comes to Crumbs and Whiskers. Yes, ...
Out and about
When You Wish Upon a Star Tree
Have you made your wish yet? Yoko Ono’s Wish Tree for Washington, DC art installation is back on the mall this summer. Making a wish is simple: head to the Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden before Labour Day and find a dogwood tree across from Giacometti’s “Monumental Head.” Make a wish. Write it down on a piece of paper (pencil and white paper tags are provided). Fold it and tie it around a branch of the Wish Tree. I made my wish earlier this summer, though I’m still waiting for it to come true. Like the love locks in Paris, which are frequently removed by the city, museum staff will clear up the tree several times a week throughout the summer so that there is room for ...
Hermione & the Spirit of Lafayette Back in the US
Nope, I'm not talking about a Hermione Granger, the Harry Potter character, but Hermione, the Frigate of Freedom, a ship. The replica of the ship that brought the Marquis de Lafayette to the United State some 235 years ago to carry the message from King Louis XVI that France was going to aid the colonies. In 1997, a group of people came up with the idea of reconstructing the frigate using the same building methods applied in the original. Some 17 years later, on April 18, 2015, she left Rochefort in France to set sail for Virginia and retrace a journey through American history. For the past month, L'Hermione plied across the Atlantic, retracing Lafayette's journey. She's set to arrive in ...
Pick Your Own Tulips at Burnside Farms
Tulips are a beautiful symbol of spring. In Washington, tulips typically bloom right after the cherry blossoms have come and gone, but they were a little late this year, probably because we've had such a cold spring. Over the past 2 weeks though, their vibrant colours have been on full display across the city. And just outside of the District, a quick 45 minutes drive away, a farm in Haymarket, Virginia, plays host to one of largest pick-your-own tulips festival in the United States. Nicknamed "Holland in Haymarket," the festival typically runs late April to mid-May, depending on when the flowers actually bloom. Visitors pay an entrance fee of $3.00, and then there's a cost per stem ...
N Street Murals Project: 3 Buildings, 3 Artists
March 14 was a miserable day for a run. On top of that, the winter had dragged on so my husband's hadn't trained outdoors as much as he had wanted to. But rain or shine, in this case rain and lots of it, the D.C. Rock'n Roll marathon and half marathon was happening, and my husband was running it. And that could mean only one thing for me... I'd be out there cheering. My favourite spot on the route is right across the street from NPR, since that's an easy marker and it's close enough to home. After I spotted my favourite runner, I decided to make a detour and swing by the new(ish) Unleashed by Petco store in NoMa on my way home. And that's when I spotted a bright mural taking up an entire ...
Postcard from France: Marseille
Last Christmas, my uncle invited us to spend the holidays at his house in Goult, a lovely village in the Luberon, located halfway between Aix-en-Provence and Avignon. My uncle is my mother's brother and they both grew up in Marseille, France's second largest city. Rather than take the train to Avignon and get picked up by my uncle there, we decided to spend a day and a half in Marseille and rent a car to drive to Goult. I have very little childhood memories of Marseille, and my husband had never been so I was excited to discover the city, especially with my favourite Marseillaise - my mom - as our guide! FIRST THINGS FIRST: LUNCH AT CHEZ ETIENNE The trip from Paris Gare-de-Lyon ...
VinoFest DC: Music, Wine, Food, Charity
My! How Vinolovers has grown? It feels like not too long ago, I was attending the D.C. startup's launch party at 1776 (see pictures below) and now they're throwing VinoFest DC, a huge wine and music festival at a venue so cool I haven't even heard of it yet. Let me backtrack... Vinolovers is a DC-based personalized wine subscription and delivery service and this is their second year hosting VinoFest DC actually. Last year's event was held at Union Market, and on Saturday, May 9, wine producers, musicians, DJs and of course, vinolovers, will take over Storey Park in NoMa. If you've been in the city for a while like I have you may remember that place as the former Greyhound bus station. ...
DC en rose: Cherry Blossoms Season in DC
I don't typically gush up over a few pink petals like this, but I've been pretty swept up in the citywide cherry blossoms celebration this year. I blame my eagerness to switch from red wine to rosé at the end of a long winter ;-) Usually, I find the whole festival annoying: local restaurants and bars stretch their menus to add cherries to everything (need I mention the cherry trees in DC don't actually produce cherries?), tourists take over the streets with their selfie sticks and, worst of all, my sinuses go nuts from the pollen influx. But this year, I'm got really into it and I just can't get enough pink. I too have caught cherry blossoms fever! Here is some of what I enjoyed this ...
Postcard from New York: Meow Parlour
Crumbs & Whiskers' kickstarter campaign has raised over $35,000, has gotten all of the necessary permits from the D.C. government and, this just in, officially signed a lease for a Georgetown location. So Washington is definitely getting a cat café in the near future though it probably won't open until late summer. And until it does, I thought I'd share what I hope Crumbs & Whiskers will be like. And that's basically Meow Parlour. Meow Parlour is New York's first, adn to date only, cat café. Or perhaps I should say a space with cats, where you can bring coffee purchased at another location around the corner. Unlike Paris' cat cafe, Cafe des Chats (which actually is more of a ...
April in Paris Washington
April in Paris may be a feeling that no one can ever reprise but if you were in Washington this past weekend you probably met the charm of spring directly in the face too. Paris may have "chestnuts in blossoms" but we've got stunning cherry trees given as a sign of friendship by Tokyo Mayor Yukio Ozaki back in 1912. I don't know if I was starved for spring after a long winter that kept dragging on... or if I was lured to the Tidal Basin by an unlikely combination of peak bloom time coinciding with a weekend which also happened to be an absolutely stunning spring day, but I definitely caught cherry blossoms fever over these last 2 days! Here are a few pictures I snapped during sakura on ...
