I spent a weekday in Washington D.C. while waiting for a visa appointment.

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

Ever since I studied abroad in South Korea in the summer of 2024, I’ve been trying to write blog posts for the little things I do, even if it’s going across town for a fun little day. When I was studying abroad in Busan my Korean teacher would show us these Naver (a Korean search engine) blogs random people would make documenting visiting parks or bakeries, and I loved that energy.

I think the Internet is a cluttered place, so even if no one reads this at the end of the day, it’s a cute little time capsule for as long as we have electricity—or my credit card stops paying for this domain. I recently started a job, at the time of typing this, and I’m finding one of the ways that I’ve continued to stay sane is by going on little side quests here and there.

Today’s blog post comes from a special little side quest I went on. In April 2026 I was awarded a Fulbright award to South Korea, to conduct research and write poems on immigrant communities in Seoul and Busan. Less than two months later I had to book my visa appointment in Washington D.C., so I decided to take off work and spend the day there.

My friend, who was visiting from Ethiopia, joined in, so let’s get into what we did this time! We packed a lot into our day.

The National Museum of Asian Art and American History are two great, free museums.

To start out our day, we headed to Penn Station in Baltimore, took an hour train ride into Union Station, then headed to the metro. Our first stop was the National Museum of Asian Art, formerly known as Freer and Sackler, and we spent about an hour there.

We got through a chunk of the first floor before heading out, as well as the Buddhist shrine room and some of the Egyptian artifact from Freer’s collection. I recommend allocating two hours for Asian art usually, as there are some fascinating pieces in the lower and upper levels. I’ve been here about six or seven times and have the art of this museum down to a science.

From there, we walked to American history. Normally you could walk across the mall, but due to the construction for the 250th anniversary, we had to take the long way. This ate into our time at the museum, but we went to the salsa exhibit and the one on Edison and steam powered engines before having to leave.

I had never been to American history out of the Smithsonians, but I definitely want to go back! We were pretty hungry at this point, so we ventured onwards for food.

There are plenty of great places to eat by the National Mall.

Originally, I had planned for us to eat at Rasika, but I did not realize they ended lunch service at 2:30 PM. That entire strip of restaurants has some gems: my personal favorites are China Chilcano, Rasika, and Carmine’s. There are some other spots I have saved and want to try out.

My friend really wanted Indian food though, so we ended up at Bindaas. It’s a casual spot where you pick your base, meat, sauce, and vegetables. All of them are Indian style. I ended up getting the sweet potato korma, curried lentils, salad, and seasonal vegetables along with a peach lassi.

We both agreed the food was okay. It was a lot of food for the price, but I don’t think I would go back there again unless I had a desperate itch and was in the area.

Walking by the embassies on Massachusetts Avenue is fascinating, and Dupont Circle is a great place to people watch.

After eating, we took the metro to Dupont Circle and parted ways temporarily. My friend was going to the Islamic Center to pray, while I had a visa appointment at the Korean consulate for Fulbright. I showed up about ten minutes early for my appointment, but it was empty in there on a Tuesday afternoon.

I was seen right away and was out within five minutes. Nothing like the thirty minute time slot I had expected when I signed up for the time slot, but he told me to come back in three weeks to pick up my passport. I then walked a little further down to the Korean Cultural Center, which usually has exhibitions, but they had closed the recent one early.

I did pick up a K-pop album and guidebook on Korean alcohol while I was in there, so that was a fun side quest. I walked back to Dupont after that and sat in the circle park with a Poppi drink. It’s always fun to people watch in cities, and DC is no different.

Eventually my friend came back and we chilled with our drinks before heading to our final destination: Vue Rooftop Bar.

Vue Rooftop Bar has some great views of the monuments and White House.

Located about five minutes from the Metro Center subway station, Vue Rooftop Bar is inside of a five star hotel. We were gawking at the decor, and once you get to the top, you can pick one of three bars or have seated service with food. We only wanted drinks, so we chose the White House bar.

We grabbed the only two open spots, as people were leaving, then ordered our drinks. I hated the mocktail I got, and my friend said her lemonade was mid. Both were around $20; the alcoholic drinks were looking like $30 a drink, which is absolutely insane.

The views did make it worth it. We could see Trump’s UFC Arena at the White House from where we were sitting, as well as the planes landing at Reagan. It was a nice view and place to chill, but if I were local I doubt I would go there often because of the price. We were also the only younger and people of color in the restaurant, which made it more awkward.

After that we headed to the MARC and then home in Baltimore. It was such a productive and fun day, and I’m glad my friend joined me and ended up having a great time as well!

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