The Best of D.C.

The one thing about living in D.C. is you never lack for things to do or places to go. If you want history and culture it is here. We lived there for about 9 months and we didn't even come close to seeing or doing everything there is in D.C. Now I know we didn't actually live in D.C. but we were in Arlington and so close to D.C. we could actually see it from our apartment. The part of Arlington we lived in was at one time part of D.C. Somewhere back in the 1800's, I think, D.C. gave the west side of the Potomac to Virginia so you can see I can easily say I lived in D.C. We could actually walk to D.C. and be at the Washington Mall in about 1 hour. Now if you don't believe me you can ask one of the J's about this because he did it. I don't think he intended on doing it but he did. (This is a story for another day and best told by him. I am hoping we can get him to tell it at sometime because it is hilarious.)

I bring this up because out of all the places I have been to and seen in the D.C. area I think my favorite may have been the Maine Avenue Fish Market.

If you love seafood or fish this is the place for you. This is a place most tourist never see and it is only located 5 blocks south of the Washington Mall and all of the Smithsonian's.

The markets actually sit on floating barges and you can walk by all the displays and buy whatever you want. The vendors will yell at you trying to persuade you to buy from them but for the most part I ignore them. One reason I ignore them is very few of them speak English and I can't understand them.

Some people don't really care for this place but they are normally the ones who think the best fish sandwich comes from Mickey D's (Sorry Mickey but there are other fish sandwiches out there.) The other people who don't like it, well, they probably just don't like seafood and that is just a damn shame. More for me.

The best fish sandwich I ever had came from here (Once again I must apologize to Mickey.) It was a grouper sandwich on plain white bread and just a little bit of tarter sauce. Perfect. It had to be fresh, I thought I was in heaven when I was eating it. The thing I regret most was not going back while we lived there and getting the scallop sandwich. One of the J's had the scallop sandwich once and said they were the best scallops he had ever had. Now granted he is young and has not seen much of the world but this time, somehow, I believed him.

Myself and the J went back to the Maine Avenue Fish Market for lunch one Friday afternoon while we were waiting for our tour of the Capital building (By the way don't go on this tour, it takes hours to get inside and once you are inside you don't get to see very much of it at all. The best part was actually on the outside where you could stand on the steps of the Capital and overlook the Washington Mall) and decided it was a good day to try some shrimp. The only problem is from which vendor do you want to buy it from. It all looks so good. Well we finally decided on the vendor that had the spicy steamed shrimp. We bought a couple of pounds of the medium sized ones with their spicy seasoning mixture on them. Now be forewarned, they will dump the spicy seasoning on until you tell them to stop so don't turn your back. This was probably the first and quite possibly the only time I have had truly fresh shrimp.

But wait we weren't done there, oh no. This place isn't just known for their seafood it just so happens they sell desserts there too. Again the hardest part is deciding which dessert you actually want to try. We settled on a Blueberry Crunch Cobbler. Hey, do I need to say anything else. Incredible.

I went there with the wife one day, by the way she is not a seafood lover so she isn't overly impressed by this place, and she bought a strawberry roll up cake thing-a-ma-jig. Just picture strawberry cake with whipped cream all rolled up like a tortilla wrapped sandwich. I must say excellent.

If I ever go back to the D.C. area, and this may actually happen, you can bet one of the first places I will visit will be the Maine Avenue Fish Market.

By the way I am not sure you can tell in the first picture but the Pentagon is in the background. And if you really look or know what you are looking for the Air Force Memorial is back there too. The Air Force Memorial is three swooping arcs that symbolize the Blue Angles.