Washington is an international city

WASHINGTON Washington shows off some of the best of the U.S. in its monuments and museums, but if that's all you ever see in the nation's capital, you're missing out.

The rest of the world also sends some of its best to Washington. Embassies, exhibits and restaurants make Washington an international city, if you just take the time to look.

Special events make it even easier.

On the last three Saturdays in July, you can eat globally during a Smithsonian Resident Associates sampling tour of international restaurants in the Adams Morgan district.

On Sept. 20, several embassies and the French ambassador's residence will welcome visitors for the annual Kalorama House and Embassy Tour to benefit the Woodrow Wilson House. In May, embassies open their doors again during Passport DC week, which this year attracted more than 75,000 visitors to experience the music, dance, crafts and cuisine of nations around the world.

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The wonders of China also will march into Washington this fall when "Terra Cotta Warriors: Guardians of China's First Emperor" opens Nov. 19 at the National Geographic Museum.

The exhibition is the largest collection of terra-cotta figures ever to travel here. Fifteen life-size soldiers, archers, acrobats and animals unearthed near Xi'an, China, will be joined by 100 sets of objects such as stone armor, weapons and bronze vessels.

Thousands of terra-cotta figures, many of them in fragments, have been found since 1974 when Chinese farmers unearthed a burial vault while digging a well. More than 1,000 life-size figures have been restored as part of the ongoing excavation.

National Geographic will dedicate the first floor of its headquarters building to the exhibition. A citywide celebration also will include hotel packages, related cultural programming and restaurant promotions.

For an earlier taste of international cuisine, join Anthony Pitch and Smithsonian Resident Associates on a walking tour of the Adams Morgan restaurant scene. On and around 18th Street NW at Columbia Road, you'll find Ethiopian, Ghanaian, Spanish, Italian, French, Cajun, Caribbean, Peruvian, Nepalese, Indian, Turkish and Middle Eastern restaurants.

Each tour lasts from 2 to 5:15 p.m. and includes four restaurants with tastings in each.

On a preview, Pitch took a group to Meskerem for a taste of Ethiopian cuisine. Owner Haile Selassie Georgis explained that Ethiopian food is eaten by hand, not with forks and spoons, because "there shouldn't be any distance between the hand and the food we eat."

It's not exactly barehanded, though. Diners tore off pieces of a spongy flatbread called injera and used the bread to pick up bites of food.

Each table shared a broad platter lined with injera and dotted with a variety of dishes: spicy chicken wat (stew); collard greens cooked with onions; tomato salad with green chilies; and mild vegetarian alicha (stew) with cabbage, carrots and potatoes.

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For an inside look at the official foreign delegations in Washington, consider touring the international embassies along Massachusetts Avenue in mansions that once housed the city's richest residents.

A Kalorama tour ticket gets you inside several sites of diplomatic entertaining, some noteworthy private homes and the Woodrow Wilson House.

The Embassy of the Republic of Indonesia has one of the more interesting stories. Its beaux-arts mansion was built by a gold miner who struck it rich.

Born in Ireland, Thomas Walsh came to the U.S. at age 19 and made a fortune in Colorado. By 1901, he had moved to Washington with his riches and started building a house that cost $853,000. As if that weren't enough, daughter Evalyn Walsh McLean later negotiated at the house to buy the Hope Diamond - the 44½-carat gem that's now in the Smithsonian Institution.

By the 1930s, the last of the family had moved out and U.S. government organizations began using the house. In 1951, the Indonesian government bought the building.

The grand staircase, marble statues, marble columns and stained-glass skylight in the entrance hall now are protected by two dragonlike statues that ward off evil, according to Balinese tradition.

The highlight of this year's Kalorama embassy and house tour might be the French ambassador's residence, a Renaissance-inspired mansion built in 1910 and considered by some to be the area's grandest embassy.

Invest a little time and imagination, and you can tell your friends you toured the world in a day.

Contact Katherine Calos at (804) 649-6433 or .