Trip Report: Assateague Island National Seashore

I've been to Assateague before, my parents insist, but given that I was two years old at the time this past weekend felt like the first time. Emily and I made a semi-spontaneous decision that we needed to get the heck out of D.C. Three hours later, we were erecting a tent on sand, oceanside.

Camp

Winter in Moscow

Russia. Where to begin.

When I told a good friend and three-time American expat in Russia that the country "is crazy and makes no sense," she replied, "EXACTLY. It makes absolutely no sense and is wonderful for it." Based on my eight-day trip to Moscow and its surroundings, Russia is a place where:

• A band in tee shirts plays a Russian-language version of Johnny B. Goode on top of a hill in ten degree weather
• Glavpivtorg, an elegant bar that recreates the experience of a Stalinist-era apparatchik, features a live band playing a loud cover of Sex Bomb in a thick Russian accent.
• "Face control," wherein scary looking bouncers turn you away from clubs if you aren't rich, beautiful, or interesting enough. Or, like us, you speak English and visibly have a good time while waiting in line and get in nearly everywhere.
• As an American we met up with noted, "Americans are fickle." Russians, on the other hand, stick with things once they decide they like them. Like mullets, or the Macarena.