Because of such a warm December this year, we did a few Holiday lights walks in the DC area. We saw the National Christmas Tree, the festive Old Town Alexandria and Georgetown, DC’s oldest and wealthiest neighborhood. Georgetown is D.C.’s top high-end shopping destination with numerous dining choices and it is a lively part of town. At night, particularly on weekends, revelers along M Street and Wisconsin Avenue eat, drink, and make merry.
Dave and I decided that it would be a perfect neighborhood to spend an evening during the holidays. Besides, there was an art event, Georgetown GLOW—the popular holiday celebration featuring outdoor public light-art installations that invite visitors to “re-imagine the season of light”. And we intended to see the new Ice Skating Rink at the Washington Harbor. Here is the picture of the festive settings near the Ice Skating Rink area.
According to Wikipedia, the primary commercial corridors of Georgetown are the intersection of Wisconsin Avenue and M Street, which contain high-end shops, bars, restaurants, and the Georgetown Park enclosed shopping mall, as well as the Washington Harbour waterfront restaurants at K Street, between 30th and 31st Streets.
Georgetown is home to the main campus of Georgetown University and numerous other landmarks, such as the Volta Bureau and the Old Stone House, the oldest unchanged building in Washington. The embassies of Cameroon, France, Kosovo, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Mongolia, Sweden, Thailand, Ukraine and Venezuela are located in Georgetown.
Metro doesn’t go to Georgetown, so we took a walk from the Foggy Bottom Metro station to M Street. This particular part of the street looks like a mini version of Old Town Alexandria. The sidewalk view.
M Street view form the sidewalk.
It was early in the evening, so we stopped at French Bistro for dinner. I like restaurants where you can sit with open windows-doors looking out on the street like in the picture below.
Outside view of the restaurant. This is a typical view for this street.
Then, we just strolled the street window shopping and stopping at the stores. Coach brand store.
Club Monaco brand store.
Anthropology with beautiful window decorations.
Kate Spade store presented mannequin with funny spiky head.
It was around 6 p.m., time for Georgetown GLOW to start, so we followed the map to find the designated places for the exhibition. Georgetown GLOW presented five light installations to view for the holidays. Georgetown GLOW is a signature winter event celebrating the holiday season organized by the Georgetown Business Improvement District (BID). We passed a nice old Boulangerie/Patisserie House on the way to the closest light installation.
The first public art named “The Lovers”, by Arthur Gallice and Herve Orgeas, are hung from the Wisconsin Avenue bridge. The two bottom figures are the reflection in the Chesapeake and Ohio (C&O) Canal.
Second Georgetown GLOW installation art was a huge wall projection. Shifting Gaze, a film by Laia Cabrera, is projected on the stone walls by the canal.
This is a quiet street we ended up on strolling to the next Georgetown GLOW piece.
Here we saw pretty Olivia’s macaroon store window holiday display with a train and a bunch of cookies.
The third piece is located in a churchyard. This is iGlow, a light corridor by Hijac.
Inside the light corridor.
We stopped for a half an hour to listen to some holiday songs performed by the girls. It was cute.
The last light pieces of the exhibition were farther away, so we got to see more of the Georgetown streets. Here is another quiet street.
We heard that a new ice skating rink had just opened in Georgetown, so we decided to stop there. The ice skating rink entrance area was very festive.
Popular restaurant Mama Rouge.
Of course, we took a picture of each other.
Cute fountain located close to the ice skating rink entrance.
And the ice skating rink. They were cleaning the ice on the rink. We decided not to wait, but proceed to the light exhibition. Besides, it was getting late.
There are many new restaurants around the ice skating rink. This restaurant offered fire right on the outside tables. It was really warm though.
The fourth art piece was an animated projection “A Happy Place”, by Kelly Towles, in an office courtyard.
source: facebook.com
The last light installation was Intr(e)Scapes, by SHO + ULR. This is an interactive installation of grass-like acrylic stalks.
On our way to the metro station, we stopped for coffee and dessert at a French bakery with a unique holiday interior design. It was right before the bakery closed. We were the last customers. In conclusion, we had a nice evening in Georgetown, but, honestly, neither holiday street decorations, nor Georgetown GLOW exhibition were impressive. We expected more. 🙂 Anyways, we enjoyed our walk and the warm evening before Christmas. Merry Christmas!
