Washington DC is no cheap city, and with both the Rally and the Marathon the same weekend, hotel prices were steep. We decided to stay out by Mt Vernon/Alexandria, which is only a 30 minute Metro ride (and our hotel even provided a free shuttle to the station), and a 20 minute drive from the Reagan Airport.
So naturally we decided to visit Mt Vernon Estate, the home of George Washington. The estate includes an orientation center with a short film summarizing his life, a tour of the mansion that he worked once he inherited it from his brother, walking around the grounds which included actor/actress who would reenact/explain activities from the day, and a really great modern educational center and museum which had many videos to detail out parts of his life.
The Mt Vernon Estate also has the Mt Vernon Inn on location. On our first visit on Friday, we ended up only going to the inn for a leisurely lunch and visiting the gift shop, and then deciding we would rather return on Sunday to spend more time visiting the estate (a work conference call took up so much of the first half of the day). The Mt Vernon Inn has its staff dressed in colonial garb and serves traditional American food from that time – ranging from turkey pye to meatloaf and fried chicken to bread pudding, and using ingredients grown on the estate whenever possible. We went for the peanut chestnut soup and fried green tomato parmesan, followed by peppered Virginia ham and cheese sandwich, as well as simple lasagna. Peanut chestnut soup is awesome, why isn’t it more common?
They also offered local root beer and beer , and also “Ales of the Revolution” series from Yards Brewery which were created based on recipes from George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson. The George Washington Porter was our favorite. Apparently GW liked the Philadelphia style porter, a deep dark porter with a molasses added (apparently molasses was plentiful while barley had to still come from Great Britain), while TJ was a fan of regular British style tavern ale, and BF liked spruce beer, a beer that was often in the rations of Continental soldiers because the spruce also help provided Vitamin C. We bought a trio of these beers to have in the evening in our hotel room and I neglected to photograph them as we watched The Lovely Bones, so the last two photos are courtesy of www.lostinthebeeraisle.com
