Hotels By City: Cheap Hotels, Hotel Guides & Hotel Blogs

For this blog posting, I'm not going to tell you about any of DC's gems or goings-on.  Instead, I'd like you to send me your favorite things to do and see in the Washington area, places to visit, eat, shop and sleep here, as well as any other local gems you've discovered in your peripatetic forays into our nation's capital.  I call this approach "Interactive Blogging."

This call for input is motivated not ...

With so many activity choices in Washington, DC, on any given day, it can be overwhelming to decide what to do, especially on the weekend.  Here are my Top Three picks for this coming Saturday, 29 September.  Since I'm into economizing, all the activities I've chosen are FREE.  Keep a sharp eye out and you just might see me at one, or all, of them!

WalkingTown, ...

The Barns at Wolf Trap, a woodsy concert venue in Virginia, about 30 minutes west of downtown Washington, DC, recently announced their Fall-Winter '07-'08 lineup.  Wolf Trap, often associated with the NPR set, is known for its dedication to high-quality artists who uphold the inspiring musical legacies of jazz, folk, classical, and rock. 

If you're planning a trip to DC in October, mark your calendar to go see (among others):  folk-singer sisters the Nields ...

Don your kilts and tune your bagpipes lasses and laddies, as you prepare to be transported back to the land of heather and tartans through song.  This Friday, 21 September 2007, at 7:30 pm, gather at the National Geographic Society's Grosvenor Auditorium for what promises to be a lively and moving concert of Scottish music, featuring renowned Scottish fiddler Bonnie Rideout and Scotland's premier musicologist, Dr. John Purser.  The dynamic duo will ...

Calling all ye Lords and Ladies, knights, damsels, rogues, wenches, good sirs, and entertainers of all kinds!  Prepare thyselves for merriment at the annual Maryland Renaissance Festival in Crownsville, MD (just outside Annapolis).  This has been a favorite tradition of mine since moving to DC many years ago.  (Check out the photos, below!)

Put on your best medieval garb and prepare to laugh at jugglers ...

THE place to be in Washington, DC, this weekend isn't in Washington, Maryland, or Virginia--it's in Philadelphia, PA, host of the Lance Armstrong Foundation's LiveStrong Challenge, now in its second year.  Participants will ride their bikes 10, 40, 70 or 100 miles, or get their heart rate up in the community 5K walk/run, to raise money for cancer research and support.  Many of ...

Although not newly opened, Montmartre Restaurant, located adjacent to the iconic Eastern Market on Capitol Hill, is a newly discovered favorite for this long-time Washingtonian.  With a warm, unpretentious atmosphere that belies its haute cuisine, Montmartre offers a true gout de Paris.  The restaurant is small and a tad crowded, with a large window facing the street, an open kitchen, cheerful yellow walls reminiscent of Van Gogh's sunflowers.  Outdoor patio seating available ...

One of the lesser-visited but no less edifying of the (free) Smithsonian museums is the National Portrait Gallery, located across from the Spy Museum in DC's trendy Penn Quarter.  The building also houses the Smithsonian American Art Museum; together, the collections offer a range of styles and media to tell the stories of prominent Americans and pioneers throughout history. 

A stroll through the American Experience exhibit, for example, features a portrait of 19th-century religious leader Joseph Smith, ...

One of the lesser-visited but nonetheless worthwhile Washington landmarks is the National Cathedral, located near the intersection of Wisconsin and Massachusetts Avenues in NW DC.  Commissioned in 1906 to be a house of worship for the nation and completed in 1990, the National Cathedral is a Gothic-styled cathedral, reminiscent of the centuries-old European churches upon which it was modeled, but with a modern ...

The feature film at this Monday's Screen on the Green is the frisson-inducing 1967 thriller, "Wait Until Dark," starring Audrey Hepburn as a blind woman who falls prey to a killer and his two hired thugs, looking for a heroin-filled doll they believe is hidden somewhere in her apartment.  With tight dialogue, superb acting, and Hitchcock-esque suspense, this film will have you gripping your blanket like a six-year-old.

 Screen on the ...