DC… Walkin… Museumin… Drinkin…
If I wrote about everything I did in chronological order while I was in DC, well I’d be writing forever…so I’ll just try to remember what I saw and comment on my memories…and I’ve been told that sometimes my memory isn’t that great…so with that warning, here I go.
Before I got to DC I purchased the “City Walks: Washington DC” walking cards in Asheville, NC. I didn’t want to waste any time not walking through the city, so I was ready to go the morning after my drive from the Great Smoky Mountains. I got my “murse” and wished the girls farewell as they went to make money, and I went to spend money. That was the one of the most awkward parts of my road trip. While everyone was off accomplishing something, and making their lives more profitable by working every day I felt as if I was the one guy out there who was spending money like crazy and never making a dime. I can only imagine that most of my friends and relatives questioned how I was getting the funds for a 5-week road trip. Staying for free with my friends from Kenyon in DC for a week definitely helped me save a lot of money, and probably extended the road trip by another week, so I’m very grateful for the girls who helped me out.
The subway ride to “downtown” DC was anything but short, but I had grown accustomed to spending a lot of time on subways on my trips so I was always carrying a book wherever I was on my trip. I spent the week reading Bill Bryson’s “Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe,” as I found myself laughing out loud during numerous sections and then being stared at by the people surrounding me. After a few days in DC I finished the book, and purchased Mark Twain’s “Roughing It.” (I don’t know where the underline option is for the blog, so I am aware that book titles are not placed in quotations…) I picked up “Roughing It” because “Lonely Planet USA” highly suggested the book for a good USA read, and I realized that for the majority of the road trip, and for the summer I was reading these two authors, and was having a lot of fun. Thinking back to the last exam at Kenyon, I had read a few books, “On The Road” by Kerouac, “Notes From A Small Island” by Bill Bryson (maybe that was the last week of school), “The Tempest” by Shakespeare, “Neither Here Nor There” by Bryson, and “The Innocents Abroad” by Twain. One of my closest friends in the world probably read twice as much as me during the summer while working, and I really look up to him and admire him, but I felt that I had read a fair amount during the 2 months since graduating Kenyon.
Anyways…back to my travels. After leaving the subway station at the National Mall, I climbed the stairs and found myself at the Smithsonian grounds. I later learned that there wasn’t one Smithsonian Museum any longer, but rather, all the Museums on the Mall, and probably outside of the Mall belonged to the Smithsonian Institution. So I started walking along the Mall and it’s brown grass which caught me off guard because I had imagined a clean cut, green look to the National Mall, but read on one of my walk cards that the government wants the Mall to be used, and to look used. It looked as if some people actually were setting up blankets on the grass, and there were numerous joggers running its perimeter, so I guess the government had achieved their goal, but I still think green grass would be appreciated.
I hadn’t been to DC in at least a decade, if not longer, and I was told by my mom that I had already seen all the sights, but for some reason I didn’t remember anything about DC. My uncle used to live in Maryland, and I remember visiting him and his family, but I never remembered much of DC, so I tried to make connections in my mind, but nothing clicked, and I experienced DC as a newbie.
I started walking towards the Senate building and used my walking cards to guide me. The first few walking cards weren’t all that exciting however, because they kept on suggesting to enter every museum on the Mall, so as an obedient follower of walking cards decided to spend the entire day visiting the Museums on the Mall, because they were all supposedly worth seeing…and more importantly, they were all FREE! I spent the afternoon visiting the Freer Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian Castle (the original Smithsonian Museum), the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, the National Museum of African Art, the Arts & Industry Building, the Joseph H. Hirshhorn Museum, the Sculpture Garden the National Air & Space Museum, the National Museum of the American Indian, the US Botanic Garden, the National Museum of American History and the National Museum of Natural History. It was a long day and I’m probably even missing a few places, but my favorite museum was probably the National Air & Space Museum, but honestly, after spending at least 10 hours in Museums I was dead tired of seeing exhibits and decided that I’d see the National Art Gallery the next day because it had closed by the time I got to it, and that would be plenty for me for the week.
The weird thing I kept on thinking about DC while I was there was, “Where the hell is the downtown?” I didn’t know if the National Mall represented downtown, or if there was a shopping section, or if the area with the Government buildings was considered downtown. The entire week I tried to answer this question, and even though I spent a week walking a large portion of the city, I still wasn’t sure where the downtown was located, it gave me a very strange feeling about the city, and actually turned me off of DC a little. However, this is weird for me to say, because I had the same feeling about London and even NY and in some degree with Chicago, but the big difference with DC was that there were so many things that reminded me of politics and government that seemed to make me feel awkward the entire week. It was more similar to how I felt about Rome when I was there for a week and was constantly bombarded by ancient relics that you’re supposed to see when you’re in Rome, but which lose their meaning and uniqueness after seeing 10 other ancient relics of equivalent importance. It’s like seeing the Colosseum, the Agora, the Sistine Chapel, and then 10 other sights that are equally impressive. Even though it may sound weird, the novelty of seeing these famous buildings and sights lose some charm after awhile. Even though I was always impressed by the architecture of Rome and even of DC, I sometimes felt that there was only so much I could take. So even though DC provided so many opportunities to see so many cool and interesting things, I almost felt that there was too much to see for everything to be enjoyable.
I returned that evening and spent the night talking with the girls about how their work was, and what it was like being a recent college graduate, as well as asking what the hell I was supposed to do as a boyfriend in a long distance relationship. That’s what most of the conversations consisted of during the week, but it was really great being able to end my day of walking with familiar faces, and a comfortable/free bed.
Tags: Summer 2007 Road Trip, Travel
