Friday began our Thanksgiving travels.  We left out of Moron at 7 AM Friday morning and flew to Dover, DE.  A night with friends in DC and now we’re in State College, PA, visiting my parents.  I love these trips.  A few days here, a few days there, a chance to say hello to people we only see once or twice a year.  A few obligatory stops to Wal-Mart where we stand in the shampoo aisle, in awe of the unending selection that we’re not used to while living in a foreign country.

Friday night we headed down to Georgetown, Washington, DC and ate at an amazing restaurant called Filomena.

This is the kind of restaurant that makes me miss city energy.  The kind of restaurant where you wait 30 minutes, even with a reservation.  The kind of restaurant that serves handmade pasta on plates as big as bowling balls and desserts so filling, a table of 8 can share 1 piece.  The kind of restaurant where you walk past old ladies flattening out thick layers of hand-cut gnocchi dough.  Gnocchi dough that’s covered in homemade meat sauce and melts in your mouth after a gulp of Pinot Noir.

Despite our exhaustion from flying 8 hours with an 11 month-old, then driving 3 hours to DC, this dinner was wonderful and memorable in every way imaginable.  Friends of ours from high school who call DC home, 2 couples from different sides of the family, Anna was one of my best friends in high school and Lara was one of Joe’s best friends in Germany, when he first joined the military.

These two couples are now close friends after meeting at my bridal shower and realized they were DC neighbors.  We love that they hang out because then we get to spend more time with them when we go to DC to visit.  Another couple joined us to say Happy Birthday to Lara and Filomena was the perfect place.

An oversized Christmas tree was shoved in the middle of the restaurant causing the tables to be almost uncomfortably close but we didn’t care.  The din of the noisy, popular restaurant would drown out any of Tripp’s crying, if he chose to get fussy, since it was 2 AM to the poor little guy’s internal clock.  After enjoying his cheerios and Yogos and throwing a half dozen pieces of bread on the floor, he fell asleep in my arms as we all sat and talked for hours over Arancini, Fried Calamari, Gnocchi, Ravioli, Wine and Limoncello.

Considering we only see our DC friends every so often it’s dinners like these that become so memorable.  The last one we had at a delicious Indian restaurant in Shirlington last August over curries and Naan bread.  We love and miss our DC friends and our short visits make these dinners all the more sweet.