maryland/dc part 2

Continued from Part 1.  

Sunday was our sightseeing day.  We took the Metro all the way to the National Mall.  No, no, not THAT kind of mall but where the all the national monuments and museums are.  We met up Mark's cousins and saw the Washington Monument and visited the Holocaust museum and really enjoyed (I don't know if that's the best word to use) it.  We learned a lot.  We were pooped after one museum so we headed back to the Metro to go to Chinatown for lunch.  And of course in Chinatown we had Spanish style tapas.  LOL!  We ate at La Tasca and took advantage of their all-you-can-eat/AYCE (this might be a reoccurring theme in my life) tapas menu.  The food was just so-so.  *2 hours of eating later LOL*  Hey.  Don't judge, we walked a lot and were hungry.  Should you visit La Tasca and do AYCE, I'd recommend the beef empanadas, bacon covered dates with blue cheese, and the pork tenderloin.  However, if you live in CA I would HIGHLY recommend you going to Lola Gaspar in Santa Ana and get EVERYTHING.  Dinner was back at in MD at  Ray's the Classics.  We enjoyed a bone-in cowboy-cut ribeye steak with bacon-wrapped jumbo scallops and their crab bisque.  Key lime pie was for dessert and for some reason dessert was on the house!  *shocked face*  I'd say that Ray's was decent but not head and shoulders above some of the steakhouses I've been to in IL.  Good but not great.  

What a good looking guy, huh? :P (go lakers)

This now concludes the MD/DC eating extravaganza tour.  However, at this time I'd like to take a moment to highlight a special friend.  A new friend but a dear one to Mark and me.  In the span of 2.5 days we visited this friend 3 times and loved every single minute.  Our new friend is Bubble Tea Café. Growing up in OC and growing up as an Asian I know boba or bubble tea.  I'm picky, man.  I'm not impressed by just some corner joint that claims to sell good boba.  I say this so that the gravity of my delight in Bubble Tea Café will be rightly appreciated.  They made their black milk tea (the standard drink of any boba place) in ways we had never before seen.  It tasted like the black milk tea we had always dreamed about...strong tea flavor but not bitter, slightly sweet (but not overly sweet) taste, and not a heavy viscosity (meaning it actually felt like tea in our mouth and not syrup).  We took a sip and looked at each other, what was this wonder in our mouths?  Delicious.  We went back three times and each time had the same thing...Black milk tea with lychee jelly.  I'm a believer.