DC….
I can’t emphasize how incredible the girls I was staying with were during my week in DC. Somehow they had no problems letting me crash on their couch for an entire week, as well as allowing me to intrude on their working lives. Sometimes people, even my closest friends or my girlfriend get tired of me after too much time with Stu. I was aware of this and tried to keep my distance, but I also really appreciated their company. The blog needs to continue, and I don’t want to stay on DC for that long so I’ll summarize the rest of my touring of DC right now. With the aid of my CityWalks DC cards I was able to basically conquer DC in a week, but I still didn’t have enough time to see everything which still boggles me to this day. The walks were longer than they were in NY, Chicago or Boston when I got the same cards, and I wasn’t sure if there was more to see in DC, or if DC was a larger city than the other three.
Before I go into my description of my journey through DC for the day, I wanted to include a little blurb on what I did on my way towards downtown. The night before, the girls had mentioned that my hair was growing out quite a bit, and one girl told me that I was beginning to look like a lumberjack, which I didn’t take as a compliment, not because I have anything against lumberjacks, but that I was definitely not going for that look. So I set off that morning with one goal on my mind, even though I had three (haircut, seeing DC, and Suz). I found a salon and they cut my hair for some crazy price but I thought I looked good so I happily paid my fee, and headed towards downtown lookin good.
I sauntered through Foggy Bottom and tried to get the feeling of what it must be like to be a GW student, and was glad that I opted to go to school in Ohio instead of DC. The school had lots of large buildings, but it seemed to be just another large city school, but this school happened to be neighboring the President of the US, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bankwhich was kinda cool. I didn’t see any Fog, and the weather was phenomenal, but the campus itself didn’t really make me feel that great. I’m sure the students who go there and pay $40,000 a year think differently…geez that’s a lot of money for that school.
I then took a mammoth walk out of my way to go see the Kennedy Center which was large and imposing but I couldn’t get inside, so I headed towards The Watergate hotel which was ugly as sin, but I thought it was cool that I was looking at a piece of history. I was amazed how ugly the architecture was, but I ate at a pizza place in the courtyard after not being able to find any decent food anywhere around. I was looking for a Texan restaurant which GW is a big fan of, but they had closed or something…maybe there’s a connection between that former restaurant and GW’s failure of a second term. I don’t know. I then walked along the Potomac River examining the Boat Center where you could get boat rentals and Francis Scott Key Bridge which didn’t seem that special, before finally grabbing some food.
Sane people in DC take the Metro. I’m not sane when I’m traveling, or at least I am partially insane because I will walk all day, everyday for a week and once I start walking I don’t see the purpose of a subway. So I walked from the Kennedy Center all the way back through Foggy Bottom and back to the National Mall where I hit up the other side of the Mall -Washington Monument, National World War II Memorial - which was really something cool to see, the famous Reflecting Pool where MLK made his “I have a dream” speech and then on to the Lincoln Memorial. I was amazed how large the Lincoln Memorial actually was, and then I wondered how imposing a figure like Abe must have been back in the day standing at well over 6 feet. The statue of Abe was really great, and I was able to get some stranger to get a pic of me near it. I then headed to see the Korean War Veterans Memorial which was actually a really cool memorial as you saw around 25 metallic soldiers molded into what they looked like as well as their pack formation during battle. It was really cool. I then headed over to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial which wasn’t as cool, but still touching. So many deaths…Fortunately there was a positive ending to this walk as I headed towards the National Academy of Sciences Building where my only interest was to see the statue of Albert Einstein. Einsterin was sitting in a cool position and I thought it’d be a cool pic to try to imitate what he was doing, and after 20 minutes of waiting around for everyone to leave so I didn’t look like an ass, and setting up my camera I had a few decent shots of me and Albert. After I posted the pics from DC Suz thought I was sitting next to a statue of Mark Twain. I thought it was sweet that she thought I had found a statue of Twain in DC, which was a fair guess, I think he’s one of the greatest writers in our nation’s history (but that means absolutely nothing, which is a good thing, because I’m not that well-read) but I thought it was really cute that she made that connection. I’m glad she knows what type of reading I’m interested in because it made me feel that my girlfriend actually cares about what I’m interested in and that’s always really important, I’d imagine.
I then hurried across the Mall towards the Tidal Basin and spent a few hours at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum which was surprisingly extremely similar to the Israeli Holocaust Museum. After walking around DC for hours and going through all the craziness the road trip provided for me it was tough for me to become way too emotionally involved with the museum, but I left in a sombre mood, and kept trucking before I made it to the US Bureau of Engraving and Printing. This was supposed to lift my spirits which had sunk at the Holocaust Museum, but my spirits immediately hit a new low when I was told I needed a ticket to gain entry.
Somehow, out of the blue, the minute after I was told this by the guard this 7 year old boy came over to me and asked me if I wanted his ticket. I thought this was quite bizarre, and told him that it was ok, and that he should go in. His mom then told me that her other son couldn’t make it because he was deathly ill, and she insisted that I take the ticket. I felt weird accepting the ticket because of the situation, but I accepted it with smiles and spent the next hour and a half around more money than I’ll ever see or be around in my lifetime. This isn’t wholly true because none of the money in the Print is actually worth anything until their authorized, but had they been authorized, which was what they were about to be, I must’ve walked around a few hundred million dollars, at least. The museum was actually a lot of fun and it did lift my spirits, and afterwards I left the museum feeling much better as I made my way to the Southwest Fish Wharf, which smelled of fish, so my mom would’ve definitely hated this place. I passed the Fish Wharf quickly after examining the market of fresh seafood, and made my way towards the Tdal Basin en route to the Thomas Jefferson Memorial. From afar the Memorial looks like a really interesting sight, and once you get inside, it loses some of its grandeur, but the statue of Jefferson is impressive and after asking some stranger to take a picture of me I left the memorial to continue my walk around the basin.
The basin led me to East Potomac Park, or it should’ve easily lead me to the park because they’re both on the same island, but somehow I got a little lost, and this affected my mood for my walk through the rest of the park. I was getting tired, and the day was coming to an end and after walking what I thought was halfway through the park, I found myself next to the Lincoln Memorial. To this day I don’t know how I headed Northwest when I mean to be going Southeast, but after I realized my blunder I decided that my day of walking was nearing its end since my sense of direction was really becoming terrible.
I headed back to the girls apartment reading my Bryson book, or maybe it was Twain by this point and relaxed for the rest of the evening.
Tags: Summer 2007 Road Trip, Travel
