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Morganza L.

Arlington, VA

👥98 Friends  ⭐️274 Reviews  📷260 Photos

Elite 2016 ’15 ’14 ’13 || ’12 ’11 ’10 ‘09

“When life gives you lemons, order the oysters!”


Reviews

Maryland House Rest Stop – South

$ – Rest stop, gas station, service area
I-95
Aberdeen, MD

⭐️ 1 star 2/15/2015

As an Elite Yelper, can I just say that I travel the I-95 corridor a lot for work, and I have never been so disappointed by a rest stop in my entire adult life? First of all, people are INSANE trying to merge into and out of this place. It creates traffic just about every time, and it’s just straight up DANGEROUS.

I stopped at Maryland House after visiting my boyfriend who is a med student at Drexel. We had just had the sweetest Valentine’s Day ever, but it all turned sour when I put on my blinker and pulled into the Maryland House rest stop.

The Beatles are dead wrong, y’all. Love is NOT all you need. Sometimes you need a latte and a clean bathroom, too.

Maryland House was PACKED with charter buses and hundreds of kids in tie dye t-shirts waiting for the bathroom. The line was literally wrapped around the corner and I had to wait 6 minutes (I timed it) to pee. Ridiculous.

More importantly, THE STARBUCKS WAS INEXPLICABLY CLOSED for service. Umm, excuse me, what? I was already literally on life support and DYING for caffeine. This was not a drill, people! Wound up getting a coffee from the Sbarro. DO NOT RECOMMEND. It tasted like actual hot garbage.

The bathrooms were mostly clean, unless you’re counting the obnoxious teenagers who were just teeming in and out of it like a school of chubby, pimpled, poorly dressed fish. #SorryNotSorry!

Maybe it’s me, but I just think that if something is called “Maryland House,” it kind of represents the state in some way. And if this is how Maryland chooses to represent itself, then EWW.

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Blown Away Dry Bar

$$$ – Blow Dry/Out Services, Hair Salon, Hair Stylists
1414 Draper Ave
Arlington, VA

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 4 stars 4/18/2016

As an Elite Yelper, I always give a new salon a chance because you never know who will truly be there for you when you’re having a bad (hair) day. You know I’m right!

I visited Blown Away Dry Bar on a Saturday, after brunch with my girls. I had just recounted the story of seeing my ex-boyfriend the previous night with some new girl (she wasn’t even that pretty!), so I needed to do something to feel beautiful again. I try to accept when the universe sends me a sign, so when I walked past Blown Away Dry Bar while listening to P!nk’s “Blow Me (One Last Kiss)” on my iPhone 6s Plus, I didn’t fight it.

I marched right in and announced myself. Morganza in the building, y’all!

I didn’t have an appointment, but when I sat down to wait, this petite woman who looked like The Little Match Girl version of Victoria Beckham immediately offered me a selection of drinks, continuing my boozy brunch vibes. I chose a strawberry bellini, which was heavy on the bubbly, but I sure wasn’t complaining. Looks like Morganza might have to Uber home. Whoops!

They had a cancellation and were able to accommodate me within 10 minutes of my arrival, which was amazeballs.

The chairs were a comfortable white faux leather and I just loved all the hot pink detailing. There’s also a cool anime-style mural painted on the wall, which looks like they just painted my soul. A big-haired, curvaceous woman making the “talk to the hand” gesture to some guy on his knees. YAS, KWEEN!

The place was immaculate. Sure, it was loud, both from the sound of the hairdryers and because they were blasting pop electronic dance remixes overhead. You know, like the ones they play at SoulCycle and in gay dance clubs. But like, when you want to love yourself better than he could ever have loved you, loud pulsing beats really help to drown out the sounds of your own insecurities-slash-sobbing.

#TrueFacts, y’all.

I’ve read a few other reviewers saying their style didn’t hold up, but like, that’s not necessarily Blown Away’s fault. Some people just don’t have the right hair for a blow out. Personally, my hair is compliant and holds a curl (I’m half Sicilian), so my style took practically no time and stayed that way until I accidentally passed out on my couch while bingewatching House of Cards and eating baby carrots with ranch dressing. I’m mostly disappointed in myself, but that’s just kind of par for the course at this point, TBH. I know I may come off as a badass b!tch with great friends and an extremely lively social life, but it’s been a rough few weeks.

I do have to take off one star because Felicity, my blower, had some pretty violent garlic breath. #SorryNotSorry! I was practically a hostage, sitting under hot forced air while she breathed chicken cacciatore into my general vicinity for like 20 minutes. She was very sweet and competent, but everyone has limits, and garlic breath crosses the line!

Highly recommend Blown Away, but bring mints if you’re seeing Felicity.

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Totally Froyo

$ – Frozen Yogurt
1961 Chain Bridge Rd
Tysons, VA

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️  5 stars 5/15/2016

As an Elite Yelper, I’m always skeptical about a place that has too much hype. You know, like how when we finally cracked down Mel Gibson’s too good to be true façade, he turned out to be an alcoholic anti-Semite, just like my ex.

But in the case of Totally Froyo, it was a total Fro-YES. My friends had been going on and on about this place, but as an Elite Yelper, I always have to remind myself that “you have higher standards, Morganza, because it’s your RESPONSIBILITY to have higher standards.”

After a failed second date with some guy who works for Deloitte (if I could rate the date experience, it would be NEGATIVE 3 stars), I came solo to Totally Froyo for a “treat fro-yo’self” night. Knowing that life is just a series of small disappointments, I tried not to get my hopes up.

But sometimes, life surprises you with 30 different flavors (45 if you count the swirls for each machine) and lets you sample as many as you want before you buy. Literal heaven.

It’s also a pay-by-weight sitch, so you feel totally in control for once in your godforsaken life.

I definitely enjoyed a taste of the mango sorbet swirled with the coconut yogurt (equal parts refreshing and creamy), but on a day like today, I KNEW I needed chocolate.

Ultimately, I went with a combination of pumpkin spice, Nutella, and carb free German chocolate cake. And may I advise you to START with a base of toppings? Personally, I lay Oreo crumbles and chocolate sprinkles at the very bottom and then put the yogurt on top. That way, unlike my fizzled relationships, I have something to hold onto at the very end that isn’t just cold and messy.

After piling in the froyo as high as I wanted (don’t judge!), I added graham cracker, cookie dough, and those chocolate caramel turtles. And then, the pièce de résistance – hot fudge of the most perfect temperature and viscosity. As an Elite Yelper, I’ve been to enough froyo places to know how hard it is to nail that, but as I pressed down on the hand pump and saw it pipe into my decadent mountain of yogurt, I knew.

It was my own small pile of redemption. I walked the long way home so I could finish it before confronting my roommate about the dishes she left in the sink, and I didn’t spill any on my date clothes. Honestly, this was the best night I’ve had in a long time. I think I’m going to be OK.

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Splashville USA

$$$ – Water Parks
1420 International Dr
Orlando, FL

⭐️⭐️  2 stars 7/1/2016

Despite my vociferous and well-reasoned objections, my dad and his wife (I refuse to call that woman my “stepmom”) forced me to go with them to Splashville USA for my twin stepsisters’ 10th birthday. As an Elite Yelper, I’m sure you can imagine how thrilled I was to have to spend ten hours in a theme park filled with sunburned high school dropouts, where every napkin reminds you that you’re in “The Splash Capital of America™.”

The food was disgusting. Like, literally, every single thing was fried. I’ve been trying to lose weight recently and get out of my funk, so while on one hand it was encouraging to see myself compared to these grisly walrus people, on the other it was like hello! Can I just get a salad or a smoothie or whatever? No dice. I had the chicken fingers, which were overly breaded and served with a trough of fries for $13.99. This outrageous price made me feel like I’d been robbed, which was only made more tragic when I realized I lost my wallet somewhere between Splashdown Volcano and The Turbo Tube.

I’m sorry, but the waterslides were stupid. They had these tandem figure-eight tubes, which meant my dad and his wife and my two stepsisters would pair up, and then I’d be there alone in the single tube, like a total and complete loser. It was one of the more humiliating experiences of my life. And then it was just like Oh great, now my wet thighs can rub together as we walk five miles around sunny Orlando.

Splashville USA has a 75-foot slide that I wanted to try, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It’s not that I was too scared, but it’s just TOO EMBARRASSING to go on something called “The Wedgie-nator.”

Instead, I found the Lazy River and sat in there for probably two hours alone, drifting. TBH, the lazy river felt a little too motivated. The current was a bit rushed, and I didn’t really appreciate when the park attendant checking pH levels asked me if I was going to be OK. For real dude, is ANYONE going to be OK?

I just wanted to sit in my inner tube and wash away, to let the chlorine overtake me as I turned to a prune and then disintegrated, fading like the color of my bathing suit until I ceased to exist altogether.

Alas, I stayed at the park another hour more.

So, why two stars? Because some literal American hero found my wallet and turned it in to the Lost and Found. Though it was soaking wet, not a penny was missing. One star for the Good Samaritan.

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Kelaine Conochan

The editor-in-chief of this magazine, who should, in all honesty, be a gym teacher. Don’t sleep on your plucky kid sister.

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