You’ve heard a little bit about D.C. as a whole. Now it’s time to explore her neighborhoods past M and Wisconsin. We don’t pretend this a comprehensive guide, but rather a little taste of what the city has to offer. Hold tight for Friday when we take on the top nightlife venues!

Dupont Circle (Metro: Dupont Circle)

With a combination of embassies, restaurants, shopping, and bars, Dupont Circle has it all, and it’s only a free GUTS bus ride away from Georgetown. Dupont Circle is also the closest Red Line Metro Station to Georgetown.

The main shopping street in this area is Connecticut Avenue northwest of the circle. Here you can pop into one of the largest independent bookstores in the region, Kramerbooks & Afterwords, which also has a café famous for its delicious pie!

Just off the circle on Massachusetts Avenue is Embassy Row, where the SFS Academic Council organizes trick-or-treating every Halloween.

Also check out the Phillips Collection. It’s not free, but there’s an excellent rotating collection of modernist and contemporary art.

Photo by Shubert Ciencia

Foggy Bottom (Metro: Foggy Bottom)

Just a 20-minute walk down M street, Foggy Bottom is home to George Washington University, the Kennedy Center, and the White House.

Adams Morgan (Metro: Woodley Park, 42 bus to 14th St./Columbia Rd.)

It’s hard to talk about Adams Morgan without talking about nightlife. But this area has a slew of great ethnic restaurants, from Ethiopian to Arab fare.

Sober or drunk, the tiny Amsterdam Falafel shop is your best bet for cheap, delicious falafel. This self-service shop let’s you stuff your falafel full of delicious toppings, and best of all it’s open late for the hungry bar hopper. And if you’re still thirsty afterwards, Tryst is a great place to listen to somber jams while sipping a sophisticated beverage.

A few blocks from the Woodley Park-Adams Morgan Metro Station, the National Zoo is free and makes a great daytrip in the fall or spring. The Zoo is one of only a handful of U.S. zoos that have giant pandas.

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Prepare yourselves, indie film geeks. The West End Cinema, a once-vacant theater located at 2301 M Street NW, will open on October 29.

The theater’s website, which launched this week, promises “art house, off-the-beaten-path kinds of films.”

During it’s opening weekend, the theater will screen Howl, an Allen Ginsberg biography starring James Franco; Budrus, the story of a Palestinian community that unites to save its village; and Gerrymandering, a documentary about the political and electoral outcomes of census taking. On Halloween weekend, the theater will host a midnight screening of Let Me In, the American adaptation of the Let the Right One In.

During the theater’s opening weekend, the directors of Budrus and Gerrymandering will also join audiences for question and answer sessions.

West End Cinema will offer discounts to seniors ($9), students ($9), military ($8), and children ($8). General admission tickets will cost $11, while matinee tickets will cost $8.

An independent movie theater is set to open in the West End this fall, according to the West End Flyer.

The Inner Circle triplex will reopen as the West End Theater at 2301 M Street NW, according to Josh Levin, who recently leased the sub-ground level property.

Levin, a film producer and distributor, plans to replace the three theaters’ seats and drapes, remodel the bathrooms, and install new light fixtures.

When the West End Theater opens, it will screen “first-run independent films, art house, documentary, and remastered classic films.”

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Earlier this month, The West End Flyer reported that Whole Foods may be opening a location in Foggy Bottom. The report, which was based on an anonymous source, places the grocery store on the Square 54 development project across from George Washington University Hospital.

Boston Properties, the company developing the 2200 Pennsylvania Ave. NW property, said that site will include “an urban grocery store,” while Senior Project Manager Jake Stroman told the Flyer that negotiations between Boston Properties and a grocery company had reached “the final step.”

When Vox contacted Whole Foods to confirm the story, however, public relations representative Ivy Goldberg claimed, “At this time there is no plan for a new store opening in that location.”

Due to confidentiality agreements, it seems that all of the involved parties seem wary of confirming the news.

Although Stroman declined to identify the company, he did reveal that the lease will not be signed for at least two more weeks. Boston Properties expects to complete the Square 54 project in early 2011.

These rumors follow Mayor Adrian Fenty‘s rejection of a proposal that would have opened a Whole Foods within blocks of the 2200 Pennsylvania Ave. NW location. In March, the Washington Business Journal reported that Fenty had rejected a bid from Toll Brothers Inc. to develop the West End Library and Fire Station—a bid which included plans for a Whole Foods store, according to the Flyer.

To date, area residents’ requests for a local grocery store have largely been ignored. The Foggy Bottom Association, a neighborhood group, conducted a survey in 2009 to determine the retail needs of residents. 92 percent of respondents cited grocery as a service missing from the neighborhoods of Foggy Bottom and the West End, despite the presence of Trader Joe’s on 25h St. NW. Whole Foods was residents’ top choice to fill the void, followed by Giant Foods, Harris Teeter, and Safeway.

Photo from Flickr user “spiderpop” used under a Creative Commons license.