I admit that sometimes I let my imagination run a bit wild. I get lost in my daydreams, and while that can be marvelously fun, it also means that sometimes reality just doesn't match the wonder I've created in my mind. That kind of happened with the Georgetown French Market.
When I found out that Georgetown was holding an outdoor French market, I had marvelous visions. Oh, the visions. Crêpes! Bicycles! Antiques! Jazz! Flowers! They all swirled around in my mind, and I basically expected to be transported to Paris via Georgetown. And really, the combination of the two sound quite lovely, don't they?
So, visions dancing through my mind, I headed down to Georgetown last Saturday. I hopped off on Wisconsin Avenue and started to weave my way through the crowds, smiling at the sidewalk sales and quaint shops. Oh, Georgetown in spring! I was feeling pretty merry. Not far from the crêpe stand up ahead was an area with live music, and I slowly made my way through the market, checking out the knickknacks that caught my eye. I was starting to get hungry, though, so I made a quick plan to grab a crêpe and find a seat in the sun to eat it as I people-watched.
But then the line for crêpes ended up being really long, and it turned out that I was supposed to wait in an even longer line for a ticket to get my crêpe, so after waiting for about fifteen minutes without moving, I decided to give up, sad and crêpeless. The live music, while very nice, wasn't quite the lively jazz band I had expected. The antiques, while heavily marked down, weren't what I was looking for, so I walked away empty-handed once again. When I returned to buy the box of macarons I had spied earlier, they were all sold out.
:(
I started to feel a bit bummed that the Georgetown French Market was more of a nice outdoor market than anything especially French. Yes, it was a nice, sunny day, and the vendors were just fine... but I didn't feel like I was in Paris, and I realized that I really wanted to pretend and slip back into the fantasy expectation I had woven. There wasn't anything particularly wrong with being in Georgetown or its market that day, but it wasn't what I had hoped for.
But then something nice happened. My friend suggested that we try a French restaurant down the street to see if they had anything set up on the sidewalk. As it turned out, they were making crêpes! Hot, fluffy, Nutella-y crêpes. Mmmm. Then, as we walked back up Wisconsin Avenue, we stopped in Book Hill Park, which offered the most lovely view of the street and houses below. We took a seat in the sun, peered down the hill at the flowers lining the stone steps leading up the hill, and I realized that it was okay we weren't in Paris. We were in one of DC's most beautiful neighborhoods, the sun was shining, and I was with dear friends. Maybe the market didn't woo me the way I hoped it would, but life was still pretty darn good.
It's easy to get caught up in the fantasy sometimes. But when the daydream fails to materialize, it's still possible to find something special in reality. Sometimes all it takes is making it to the top of the hill and looking down.
