In the travel blogging community, it’s common — or inevitable really — to develop strong relationships with friends across the globe. Many of these friendships are between people who have never met in person but whose shared interests and passions create a bond that’s undeniable.
When I started this blog and the @noplacelikeoz Twitter account one year ago, I quickly connected with a handful of fellow travelers and read about their adventures while I anticipated beginning my own. Soon, several friendships began to form, and these relationships continued to grow throughout my year in Australia.
One of the people I connected with straight away was Laura Walker of A Wandering Sole. Her solo travels and volunteer work in Africa blew me away, and her positive energy in both her writing and tweets made her stand out as someone I wanted to know.
After one year of reading one another’s blogs, chatting on Twitter, swapping stories via email, Laura and I finally had an opportunity to meet a couple of weeks ago! Before she set off to South Africa for the summer, Laura spent a few days in Washington, DC. Thankfully I only live two hours from the nation’s capital and we met for a day of eating and sightseeing.
A glimpse of our day in video!
When the two of us were deciding how to spend our time in the city, I knew food had to be involved. Thanks to a host of great shows on The Cooking Channel, I learned about the vegan Sticky Fingers Bakery (winner of an episode of Cupcake Wars) and the Sauca food truck (serving up international-themed wraps with a wide variety of sauces). I suggested both, and Laura was game!
We met at Sticky Fingers Bakery and relaxed and talked for ages while sharing a red velvet cupcake and the one pictured below (cinnamon chocolate cake with bourbon vanilla bean frosting, filled and topped with bourbon caramel and candied pecans).
At lunch time, we failed to find one of Sauca’s four locations, despite turning up at the posted intersections. We stumbled upon a replacement food truck and had a super fresh sandwich instead.
Neither of us had enjoyed DC’s monuments in warm weather, so we set off to walk the straight path from the National Mall to the Lincoln Memorial.
Taking a picture of Laura taking a picture
The Washington Monument
Flags surrounding the Washington Monument
The Virginia pillar at the WWII Memorial
Inside of the Lincoln Memorial
I enjoyed walking, chatting, and taking photos alongside Laura. I just wish I had photos of the two of us! We used our D-SLRs to take photos of scenery individually and relied on her smaller digital camera to hand to passersby to take photos of us. As Laura has limited internet access in South Africa, it may take a while to see them, but there will be pictures of us together 🙂
If we had more time to explore the city, we may have visited some of the monuments and memorials I’ve visited in the past like…
Arlington Cemetary
The White House
The Supreme Court
The U.S. Capitol
And, since the Reflecting Pool was drained during our visit, here’s a shot of what it normally looks like:
If you’re a fellow travel blogger and ever find yourself in DC, let me know! And for those of you with an active YouTube account, send it my way so I can subscribe! As you can tell, creating videos is completely new to me, so please bear with me as I learn the ropes and hopefully move on to something beyond YouTube’s basic options in the future O:-) Adam did all of the editing for the Australia road trip, so it’s all new to me!
Twitter Updates
I go to DC all the time when I’m at home so I’ll definitely be calling you up. Except we don’t have to bother with any of those monuments — let’s just focus on cupcakes!
I’ll start working on a DC food tour for us. You name the date and it is SO on.
Cupcake looks great. Does not surprise me that it had a bourbon component to! :):)
Had to select an interesting cupcake! Who needs plain chocolate when you have that one?!
OMG that cupcake made me drool!! Bummer that you couldn’t find the Sauca food truck – maybe another time. Looks like they just opened a restaurant in Arlington. 🙂 Maybe we can check it out (& the cupcakes of course!) when I get back to the States. 🙂
If we would have had time, we would have gone to the restaurant for sure!
The red velvet was okay, but this one was pretty nice. Can’t wait to try the other flavors — and don’t worry, this won’t become another macaron challenge.
I’m so glad you 2 got to spend some time together! And what an awesome day it was, that cupcake looked amazing!!!
I’m ready to go back to that bakery and try a few more flavors. Sharing is so fun…taste more flavors and pretend you’re being super healthy by eating less O:-)
Love the photos Heather! Can we visit these places if (when!) I come to visit you? x
Thanks Shel! And of course we’ll go to those places when you visit! It’s become tradition with Robin, Kev, and Gemma to go the first and last day, and I like going to DC since I didn’t growing up. Can’t wait to revisit London’s beautiful spots with you next month!
I love meeting up with bloggers! Hopefully one day you and I will have the pleasure. Great monument pics!
I would love to meet you two. Like Laura, we’ve been following one another from the start, and I really do feel a connection to you.
My internet is sooo expensive at the moment. I have mine ready to go and hope to post our fun pics soon when I have my own sim card. Such a great day! Thanks so much for planning it 🙂
Looks like you already have all of the photos of us on your post — yay!
If I can get some mobile work together by the time you get home, maybe I can take you up on that offer to travel back to the east coast with you from the west on your road trip 🙂 Here’s hoping.
Aww looks like a fun day! Wish I had time to scoot over to DC on my “blink and you’ll miss it” LA trip coming up in a few days! Darn gigantic country!
Meeting other bloggers is so much fun – I’ve found there’s pretty much always an instant connection and you can talk like you’ve known each other forever.
Now that I’m home, I appreciate even more so the connection I have with many travel bloggers. Re-entry challenges is something only you guys understand!
Who knows…maybe our paths will cross somewhere along the way! So many places I want to go you’ve visited already, so it sounds like a sure thing 😉
A. I’m so jealous you got to meet Laura.
B. I’m so jealous she got to meet you.
C. Some of my best friends are from the internet. I love being an online nerd 🙂 Speaking of that, I hope that one day our paths cross!
Richmond was an *almost there* for us, so I know it’ll happen — I just hope it doesn’t take years!
I’ve been really fortunate to make so many great friends online and have many of them become offline friends too. That’s the reason I go to London…what started with one online friend blossomed to 10-15 friends the first time I met his group of friends 🙂
You know I am jealous… but it is okay we will one day meet soon! I love meeting other bogers especially when you meet bloggers you have been following for a while.
Laura was the first person I met that I’ve been talking to for a long time, and there was this feeling of “IT’S ABOUT TIME!” 🙂 When we finally meet, I expect a massive hug!
Aw Heather! Sounds like a lot of fun. And everyone’s right – that cupcake looks sooo good!
It was good…my dad has already made me promise to take him there when we head to DC later this summer. No arguments here!
Love your photo of the Capitol building.
The cupcake’s flavour profile seem rather interesting too 🙂
I think you should come for a visit and photograph DC! There are so many buildings and memorials to capture. All the better when the weather plays nicely. And that Capitol building photo was with my old Kodak ezShare 🙂
Oh yeah, and I could finally introduce you to a few places to eat!
Ah! Should have read this one first–so when I get to DC, you will come visit! Hooray!
Also, this made me homesick. 🙁
Sorry about that Megan 🙁 But we will eat plenty of food truck and Burmese goodness when you come!!