City of Columns

Good day, gentle reader, we resume our tale of two travellers in a foreign land.

Prevously they have left the land of plentiful bagels and suffered on the journey of Amtrek. Check my previous post for more details.

Now we resume our tale in the land of the free (trade) …

From Union Station, which looks a whole lot better from the outside than on the platforms, we got a taxi up to our hotel – the Omni Shoreham (on Rock Creek).

This was a proper hotel, which was to say it had a restaurant, served breakfast every day (which it charged for), had paid internet access (at $10 for fifteen minutes!) and looked posh. But no kitchenette, no microwave and no TV guide. There was en suite (but the plug didn’t work properly here neither). There was an N64 built into the TV. Which you had to pay for.

Anyhoo, as Amtrak had added over an hour to the journey, which meant the taxi had to travel in rush hour so we didn’t feel much like going out. Instead we sat in the outside terrace and ate at the hotel restaurant. It wasn’t too bad.

This time.

By now, it was Sunday and after having a full buffet breakfast (I’ve still never had decent bacon in the States – it’s always dry, crispy and salty, and trying to get a fried egg …)

We decided to do a quick saunter around the block – at the very least we needed to find a working laundry. Then we’d come back to the hotel and decide what to do with the day. It took only a couple of minutes to find the elevator to the local Metro. We continued up the slight hill with the intent to see what we could see from the top.

Well, to the left a Starbucks, forward the road and to the right, a zoo. Obviously.

The National Zoological Park is part of the Smithsonian Institute, was landscaped by the same guy who worked on Central Park and is free to enter. Maps cost $2 though.

As you can guess, what started as a five minute jaunt to see the area ended up as a five hour visit to the zoo with a final walk through a leafy canyon back to the hotel. There were lions, and tigers and bears. Oh my. And toucans, elephants, panda’s, sea lions, eagles. And iguanas and geckos. And a whole manner of other feathered and furry animals. The kiwi didn’t come out to play, though and we couldn’t see any of the wolves.

I’m also fairly certain that Marine One went over our heads – at least we saw two large helicopters with distinctive colours flying in different directions. Watching West Wing does provide some info …

And, of course, I foolishly left the camera in the safe in the hotel room. DOH!

We ate at the bar lounge that night, seemingly having left our appetites at the zoo. Wife number one had been watching the tamarins eat too much as most of her blueberry cheesecake ended up over her white woolen top.

Ah.

Luckily there was a cleaners just up the road.

After an expensive breakfast the next morning, we returned to the elevator for the Metro.

Yet another underground transit system for us to try out.

Well, the Metro is shady everywhere – not badly lit but deliberately shady, which when combined with the concrete walls is not very inspiring to look at. Maps and signage are better as they follow the Underground concept of showing at each platform where the train is going and each stop to get there. And don’t show anything else on the platform maps a la the Underground.

But buying a ticket is more of a faff – ticket prices are only shown for a single and you have to do sums to work out the value of the return fare then ‘load’ a farecard with that amount. There are machines inside the barrier for if you get the fare wrong and need to ‘top-up’ to get out. Once a farecard is used up, it is taken by the machines. And the farecards get printed on them how much is left.

Oh, and the single fare changes dependent on the time of day, but it doesn’t tell you when that is.

We weren’t the only newcomers who needed human assistance to work it out.

There were smart cards that seemed to be like Oyster PrePay but we didn’t look into them – besides we already had something similar from the subway in New York.

The Underground has definitely gone up in my esteem since this holiday.

So once we’d finally got tickets, and helped a nice American couple get theirs, we descended to the platform, using the maps to look at our journey to come (NY transit take note, please).

We journeyed the three stops to Metro Center which brought us out on 13th and G Street North West.

A quick note on the layout of Washington DC:

http://www.frommers.com/destinations/washingtondc/0035030022.html

Not quite as simple as Manhattan – there are avenues normally with state names and normally running diagonally to the main grid system.

BTW If you do search for the street layout of Washington, be prepared to wade through a mountain of Masonic imagery …

Well, with a slight distraction at Filene’s basement, we went past the Treasury building and looked at President Bartlet’s office – oops sorry I mean President Bush Jr. Then we walked onto the Mall and were towered over by the Washington Monument. And looked down onto the helicopters flying low over the Potomac. Then by the WW2 Memorial and along the reflecting pool to the Vietnam Memorial. Across to the Lincoln Memorial then down to the Korean War Memorial.

[note - this is the point where something has gone awry with our photos and we cease to have any beyond the WW2 memorial. The Washington shots are here – hopefully if any file recovery programs actually work, this set should increase)

By now we we a little memorialed out so we headed across to the Smithsonian castle and found a foodstore so we could eat on the Mall midway between the monument and the Capitol building.

We then entered the Air and Space Museum – full of big hanging things – then pushed on past the Capital to the Library of Congress then past US Supreme Court back into Penn quarter, missing – sadly – the International Spy Museum and returning to Metro Center.

They don’t do things by halves in Washington, at least in terms of architecture. There doesn’t seem to be one building that doesn’t, from outside at least, stand proud in a city of columns.

We returned back to the hotel and finally found the main entrance to the Metro – that we had been walking past every time we left the hotel. I’m not certain how anyone can miss three escalators covered by a large overhang but we managed.

And it we hadn’t been going to a drug store I doubt that we would have noticed at all, it being in the middle of an intersection …

A quick note on buying pharmaceuticals in the US, if it’s an over the counter drug, bring your passport. The pseudoephedrine I was taking to try to keep my sinus’s open while I failed to shift a head cold is a federally controlled substance. A driving license is not enough – as you need to have a citizen number (seriously) to purchase it. My passport number worked – though it did tell the computer I was a resident of Ottawa (shrugs)

We braved the hotel restaurant again that night – and wished we hadn’t. Wife number one had the seasonal ‘cherry blossom’ based three course and only really liked the ice cream that was part of her chocolate and cherry pie – the ice cream from Haagen Dazs.

The duck parfit stack I had had changed it’s contents since I had it two days before – there were a large number of peppercorns on the side of my plate by the end and there had been none the first time I had eaten that dish. The main meal was no better and again only the Haagen Dazs ice cream was enjoyable.

With the hotel eateries out of the picture, we purchased fresh bagels from a local diner. If you are in the North-West area of Washington, I’d recommend Cafe International on Connecticut Avenue. They open from 6.30am to 5.00 most days, have internet access (25 cents a minute or $7.90 unlimited) and a good selection of cakes and savouries. The only problem we had was a slight language issue between our UK English and the Japanese accented American of one of the servers.

Returning to the Metro, we bought fare cards like seasoned commuters (kinda) and headed back into Penn Quarter to see if we could find any shops.

Yet again, we got waylaid by Filene’s basement. Slightly laden down, we stopped in a local bakery for sandwiches, cookies and coffee then got overcome by a last bit of lingering culture and headed to the Natural History Museum.

Yet again the Gem gallery caught the eye of wife number one – this time the Hope Diamond along with the Splendor of Diamonds exhibit. The meteorites weren’t quite as good as the ones on display at the American Museum of Natural History in NYC but the quality of the exhibitions was markedly better – see, no stuffing …

Having missed the wildlife photos at the Natural History Museum in London, it was nice to be able to catch up with another collection here – it shows what a lot a patience and a damn good camera, and a little lucky timing can achieve.

We returned to the hotel one final time – then remembered that we didn’t like the food and we had to pick up a couple of bits of laundry. So we recovered the nearly clean woolen top and went out to the Open CIty diner. The service was quick as was the food. The food was simple and tasted good – something our hotel could have learnt from. We were even able to take dessert out with us.

Our last day in America loomed and we tried to fend it off with a breakfast at the Cafe International.

No luck – first a taxi to the sweeping concrete of Dulles International Airport (I’m surprised there weren’t any columns) then wandering aimlessly up and down the terminal which took almost our remaining cash reserves and left us with the grand total of $7 and change.

Then onto Virgin Atlantic to find that economy class in this plane wasn’t up to the standard of economy class of the flight over. The screens had a permanent flicker and the films weren’t the direct access of the flight over – instead they started them playing on a loop. If you missed the start, then you had to wait until it started again.

I managed to watch most of the Golden Compass and Juno but don’t ask me questions on camera or colour as the lady in front of me spent the entire journey with the seat back and I got to test the vertical viewing angle (result – NOT ENOUGH!)

Apparently I was meant to be sleeping.

Yeah right …

Arriving back at Heathrow, it was nice to walk into the short UK citizens line and not nice to then wait as the baggage handlers put the cases out one at a time. One case for about every complete turn of the baggage carousel.

I got to know some of those bags very well, particularly the African couple who had brought 13 bags with them. Yes, that’s 1 AND 3, 13 bags.

Finally we escaped to rescue our bored looking taxi driver who returned our sleep deprived bodies back to our abode.

Now I just need to spend some time sleeping to feel rested before returning to work next week.

For those concerned, wife number one was able to complete Resident Evil DS once through and is most of the way through attempt two.

This may have been the last time I see the DS …