Road to Nowhere

Last full day in DC today, although we have some time tomorrow before the evening flight and a car to get around (it was cheaper to hire a car for the day than to get a cab to the airport!). It turns out that there is a Smithsonian outpost at Dulles with some cool (I use “cool” in the aerospace nerd sense here) stuff – Concorde, a Space shuttle, Blackbird and, possibly, Enola Gay. How did we not know about this before? Time has duly been set aside.

First outing of the day to the Newseum, Washington’s tribute to the first amendment and the rights of the free press. It’s an excellent museum documenting the history of the press and exhibits from major events…

…and some sections of the Berlin wall. Can you figure out which side is east and which west?

There are endless old newspapers, including one documenting the gunpowder plot, ancient copies of the Observer and the Spectator etc. and some interesting stuff from the FBI.

From here we went in search of lunch and ended up in Lincoln’s Waffles. A Vietnamese greasy spoon that made the Victoria Centre cafe look like World Service. There was actually a slick on my coffee. Tasty, but I felt like I needed a shower afterwards and was exuding grease for several hours. We were befriended by the resident nutter (Hi Steve!) who had considerably more knowledge of the dealings of Prince Charles than I do. At least I thought he was a nutter (albeit a very friendly and pleasant one) before he revealed himself to be a man of incisiveness and discernment by asking if Ethan and myself were brothers. I think I found it more amusing than Ethan.

A quick hike out to the Thomas Jefferson memorial before heading back to the scene of our earlier greasy crime and Ford’s Theatre, the location of Lincoln’s assassination.

Lincoln was shot on this balcony and someone felt it was a good idea to put a picture of Washington there. That’s just adding insult to (extreme) injury!

As it turns out, the Newseum is on the site of the old National Hotel where John Wilkes Booth stayed the night before he shot Lincoln. Almost as though we planned that link. What with the greasy spoon as well, synchronicity was playing silly buggers with us. Spooky.

Looks like Washington is getting some of the rain from the tail end of hurricane Harvey on it today. We seem to have been just ahead of the worst of this for the whole trip with Tennessee getting a considerable soaking after we left.

Of course, being the intrepid breakfasters that we are, Ethan and myself got thoroughly soaked in search of a hearty morning repast. The research had led us to believe that Duke’s Grocery in the DuPont Circle area of Washington would provide a decent veggie brunch option). This indeed proved to be the case (they apparent fry their potato concoction in truffle oil and it certainly works!) but required quite the expedition. According to Google we have walked nearly 50 miles since we have been in DC…

Washington is heaving this weekend (it is apparently Labour Day weekend), so I’m glad we managed to get through some of the museums during the week. We will manfully fight through some more today.

I wanted to go to the Hirshorn to check out some modern art, but opinion was split within our party as to the sense of this endeavour. I forged on solo and was rewarded with some classics.  One of the guides on the tour bus had waxed less than lyrical about this…

Apparently, it had cost the American tax payer $850,000 and opinion is somewhat divided.

Anyway, much inspired I set off to create my own street art. The White House lawn presented a juxtaposition of geese and rising steam which I like to call “Geeser”…

…and this which I entitle “Ratus Deflatus”.

Sorry, but it’s a slow news day!

Anyway, we both thoroughly enjoyed the Museum of the American Indian and our second visit to HipCityVeg for the most outrageously good vegan fast food I have tasted in a long time. Damp, but well fed.

We’re casting our net a bit wider today. Heading out of the centre to the zoo and to explore the historic areas of Georgetown and Foggy Bottom. We’re probably not going to spend much time in Foggy Bottom, but I just like typing it. Shady Grove is another good one – probably perfectly innocent, but seems quite apt for Washington. How do these names get picked?

Anyway, first stop the zoo, primarily to see the pandas. Luckily for us, they were out and performing today.

Hard to believe that they are dying out.

Great to see them, but we were quite disappointed not to see the sloth bear. Couldn’t be bothered to put in an appearance. Lazy bastard.

I am genuinely shocked by the size of the anaconda. There is no excuse for a snake this size.

I mean really?

Onwards to Georgetown under the pretense of viewing some historic buildings. Of course what we were really interested in was seeing the Exorcist steps…

Somone had thoughtfully left this to help us battle any demons that might show up,

or possibly out of concern for the sort of people who would be interested in such things. I was actually tempted to try an exorcism of the joggers who kept getting in our way running up and down the steps. Any lingering evil was overwhelmed by the whiff of sweaty smugness.

Back into the core of Washington and an audience with the main man. I’m not entirely convinced of his credentials…

This is a day to tick off some of Ethan’s list after he tolerated my unseemly space geekery yesterday. First up, a tour around the rather impressive Capitol Building.

I found it all quite fascinating (although obviously, I would not admit this to Ethan) and got an interesting slant on the revolutionary and independence aspects from our Scottish tour guide. The building is quite spectacular but has on several occasions turned out to be sadly inadequate as the US expanded beyond the initial 13 states. Still, can’t fault the decor or the statement of intent.

In fact, all of the buildings in DC could comfortably be in Rome or Vienna. I guess if you build a capital city from scratch, you can design it however you want. Apparently, the obelisks etc. are a consequence of the founders being masons and obsessed with Egyptian stuff.

It seems that DC was supposed to take land from Maryland and Virginia and was designed to be a perfect diamond. At some point, Virgina balked at giving land over to the federal government and asked for it back. Congress apparently voted to allow it, but I can’t help thinking that some of the congressmen would have been gently rocking in their seats, thinking of what this would do to the symmetry…

Anyway, from the Capitol, on to the botanical gardens to see the stinking corpse flower (well why wouldn’t you?). Apparently, this plant flowers once every 7-10 years and just happens to be this week. Right place and right time for once. Didn’t seem all that stinky though so maybe the cold hasn’t entirely cleared up. I wasn’t too disappointed!

Onwards to Arlington and the Pentagon (strictly drive by) and then back to the history museum. We were greeted by this guy…

Now Washington as a national hero: yes, father of the nation: sure, but Greek god? I think not. The guy had hippopotamus teeth for goodness sake. You can see why he had to work so hard not to be anointed God-Emporer.

Still some interesting stuff inside.

Last tourist trip of the day to the National Archives to view the original copies of the Constitution, Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence. I maintained that I didn’t think that the Declaration of Independence looked valid, but I didn’t sense a lot of support for the notion.

First full day in DC – time to explore the swamp. Having been disappointed by our one brief glimpse of a swamp in Alabama, we are keen to explore Washington which is (or was ) both physically a swamp and, we are led to believe, a metaphorical one.

Washington seems like a pretty walking-friendly city (heat notwithstanding) and so we hit the tourist trail. First stop: the Smithsonian Aerospace museum. This is total space nerd nostalgic heaven. Walking through the door, I caught a glimpse of the Viking lander and I was instantly back in 1976…

There are lots of famous planes  – The Spirit of St. Louis, something that the Wright brothers threw together, but who cares with so much space geekery to be indulged…

Although, having seen a test version of a lunar module, I am starting to think that all the conspiracy theories about Kubrick filming the moon landing in a studio might be true. I’m not sure that this thing ever landed anywhere – it’s made of tin foil!

I thoroughly approve of the fact that I can get free Wifi in all of the Smithsonian buildings via eduroam. I also approve of the fact that they are all free – originally courtesy of a Brit, but now courtesy of the American tax-payer. Thanks America!

Anyway, with so much to cram in, we had to make use of a tour bus to get around some of the sites…

We also joined the night bus tour as we thought that this would give a different perspective. All went fairly well, although I think we may have annoyed someone by accidentally photo-bombing their Lincoln photo

and I feel guilty about my inappropriate thoughts as we viewed the war memorial. I can’t be the only one who has been reminded of Tropic Thunder by this…

As if karma were as instant as John  Lennon would have us believe, our return bus journey was fraught with peril (or at least bizarre delay). The bus ground to a halt in the middle of the road for no readily apparent reason and just stayed there. The increasingly distracted and strained commentary was an indication that all was not well.

We never found out what the exact issue was. It seems that the driver had taken a wrong turn and then wigged out – whether this was from not knowing the route back or some concern about whether the bus could get under a bridge is unclear. Eventually, the encouragement and support from passengers and tour guide crescendoed into a “Now, it’s, clear now, just go, go now, for God’s sake just go!” This led to a crawl forward, numerous more wrong turns and some barely legal manoeuvres to try and get back on track. Livened up the whole journey and engendered a certain comradery amongst the passengers.

As a bonus, it annoyed the hell out of the old couple who had been rude and irritating throughout the tour. I tipped accordingly.