A Mad Adventure

It may come to no surprise that I’m a bit of an Alice in Wonderland fan. And please let me clarify (somewhat) what I mean by that. I don’t hold particular loyalties or assert that the Disney animated movie or the original story are “the best” or “my favorite”. I don’t hold one particular character type or world type (ex: Technicolor, Tim Burton style, etc.) as being the representative for Alice and the other Wonderlanders (Wonderlandians? Wonderlandizens?). The best way to describe what fascinates me is the concept. The never-grow-up-and-lose-your-curiosity-about-life-ness about it. The follow-your-feet-and-see-what-adventures-you-may-discover-ness of it. The you-could-be-looking-at/through-a-mirror-so-don’t-rely-only-on-your-perspective-ness there. Even the everything-is-falling-apart-so-let’s-just-have-a-cup-of-tea-ness has become a sort of mantra. Now, keeping all of that in mind, just try and imagine what it felt like to be spirited away to a little restaurant in the heart of D.C. by my father called “The Mad Hatter”.

I was headed in on the metro to transfer from the red to the green line to head further south in order to get picked up by Kailey for a night of brownies, Avatar, Kingdom of Heaven, and more. My dad thought it would be fun to make a day of it and to head out in the morning early to actually spend some time in D.C. instead of just flying right through it. I was excited to spend time with him and to just get to have some walking sprees in the city (since I’ve only been a few times and only to specific places). We are both fond of walking and so once in the district, we set out wandering the streets to see what we could see. Or at least, I thought we were wandering. As it turns out, Dad knew where we were going the whole time, and led us up Connecticut and gestured casually at a black awning adorned shop-front asking if I thought it would due for lunch.

I can’t even think of how to describe… It’s not like it was all done up in bright colors, or the wait staff wore ridiculous costumes; it could have passed as an ordinary little restaurant and bar. There were tastefully framed photographs of well-known Alice illustrations, movie posters in different languages, and even just unknown fancy people in hats.

The walls were (Queen of Hearts)red with dark wood paneling from halfway down.

(poor Dad, neither one of us knew my camera had switched its flash on ><; )

All of the tables had tiny teacups on saucers next to their silverware wrapped in white linen that was filled immediately by our waitress upon sitting down.

The menu was themed of course, but with ingenuity so that the “Alice Burger” that I had was vegetarian and had mushrooms on it (and no, I grew neither taller nor shorter while eating either side of it~).

I felt giddy and mischievous and grateful and happy. The rest of the day was splendid as well, in that we explored, got lost, improvised, succeeded, and wondered at marvelous things. Dad is one of my favorite persons in the world, and definitely a welcomed partner-in-crime when traveling down the rabbit hole.