Around DC without a Baedeker, and out of Cherry Blossom time.

I write this while sitting in the hotel lobby waiting for Kerry’s postal conference to end. He is here for the annual Customer Relations coordinator conference, I am here as a tourist. Poor Kerry! How envious he is when I tell him of my days seeing the sights when he is stuck in the hotel in meetings. I had thought about one last trip in to DC, but my feet ache and I have not had time to write my journal so these last few hours will be spent in reflection of my time here. I have seen so much, and felt so much; the galleries have made a deep impression on me. The Freer Gallery most of all.

But where to begin? Perhaps with dinner on the first night, but maybe meeting Kerry of the plane at the baggage carousel. We flew different airlines for the simple reason that Kerry had to fly on a government-issued ticket I flew Frontier and whilst on the hotel shuttle I extolled the luxuries I encountered with my new favourite airline – real food, comfy seats and an a personal TV screen in every seat back. The hotel room is not as cozy as I had expected, I wasn’t counting on Bellagio quality, but I had hoped for a bigger bathtub. As Kerry is free the first night we take the Metro to the Downtown area for dinner at the Hotel Washington’s rooftop terrace with a splendid view of the White House and National Monument. Kerry surprises me by sitting outside in the heat. After dinner we descend on Borders bookstore as it is closing and Kerry buys me a great DC Tourist guidebook, I feel equipped now I have this and my pop-up map as well as my carefully coordinated itinerary downloaded from the DC Official Tourist website and loaded on to my Palm Pilot. All this but no Baedeker.

I start my first day of touring with a banana and a latte at the hotel Starbucks coffee stand while I consult my Palm Pilot itinerary. I haven’t drunk coffee for weeks and I was expecting the same experience I receive in the Bellagio, but the coffee tastes bitter and offers little satisfaction. I take the hotel shuttle to the Metro and travel one stop for a mercy mission to buy face cream. Kerry despaired at me when I told him I going to the Fashion Center mall at Pentagon City first thing, but I would not have made the trip with out stopping at the Shu Uemura boutique inside Nordstrom’s. And once I had found out that there was a Shu boutique I was like a dying man clutching at straws. I stay at Nordstrom’s longer than expected due to the fact that the Shu sales assistant was a cute (gay) guy who pampers me with a makeover. His name is Jason Garner and we decide we are cousins! I buy my fabulous fig-scented anti-aging moisturizer, and a bergamot-scented facial mist with deep-sea minerals as well as enough cosmetics to last me until (at least!) Christmas. I spend enough money to make Solomon blush, although not with my tangerine blusher. I make a quick pit-stop at Club Monaco for a pink t-shirt I had been promising myself and with face creams and beauty goods in hand I set off for Union Station and the National Postal Museum. I'm not particularly interested in shopping more in the Union Station shops, but I stop to look at the cafes and take photographs of the interior before I head off for the Postal Museum in time for the book signing. I buy the books on “Owney”, the postal dog, by the two different children’s book illustrators and wait in line to have “A Lucky Dog” signed by Dick Wales. This one is signed for “Kerry, of the post office. Owney’s friend” and two copies of "A Small Dog's Big Life", signed by Irene Kelly for cousin, Joanne's James and cousin, Paul's, Charlie, who both celebrated their First Birthdays and Christenings this year. After using the interactive postcard machines I buy stamps and browse the well-curated exhibits and then leave for the long walk to the Botanical Gardens. For all my maps and preparation I get hopelessly ‘turned-around’ trying to figure out which side of the Capitol Building was the front. I am actually walking straight at the Botanical Gardens but it's only evident when I see the huge domes of the conservatory. I spend a fabulous hour plus having a ‘sniff-fest’ in the spices and fragrances exhibit, and thoroughly enjoy the orchids in the rare species glass-house. The Palm room is moist and earthy and when I fill my water bottle the water has an earthy taste too. I’m in the powder room when Kerry calls me – most embarrassing, and lacking proprietary I take the call. He lets me know that I am invited to dinner at 7:30 with the other team leaders and their families at the conference. It’s now 4:00 pm I have plenty of time. I continue the gardens, finish my tour and walk miles back to the Metro which is not signposted and appears on the map to be nearer than it is. Groups of tourists are asking each other “Is this the way to the Metro”. No one knows and en masse we ask a group of road workers who just smile and point. I have learnt here, similar to Kerry’s way of determining if directions are authentic in Turkey (*see Kerry's account), to ask two people and take a median. One person will invariably say “nine blocks” another will say “four”, in DC this usually means the actual distance is seven. I reach Crystal City and as the hotel shuttle is nowhere in sight and I do not feel like waiting, so I walk the seven blocks to the hotel. There is evidence that Kerry has been in the room and taken a nap as the room is dark and cold and the pillows are all mussed up, but the napper is gone. The room is decidedly gloomy still even with the curtains open and with our belongings unpacked. I prepare for the evening at the Chesapeake Grill and to meet the other USPS cronies. The food is hideously expensive and slow in coming, the sea bass is good, but the long-awaited saffron and champagne sauce is salty and the vinaigrette for the salad has a bite like battery acid.

We skip desert and the team leaders meet while I head back to the room to turn in.

Art for Art’s Sake

Sunday is the only day Kerry and I can have breakfast together and we have the buffet in the Cinnabar café. Kerry has already reported that the full buffet is C3, so I have the continental buffet of pastries and fruit. We say our goodbyes for the day and I take off for the Mall and the Smithsonian. I come out the wrong side of the Metro and am accosted by a man selling maps for the homeless. He is disgruntled when I refuse to pay but has already told me the way to the Freer Gallery. Inside the Gallery is cool and quiet and a beautiful courtyard and fountain is at the center of the museum. Hardly anyone is visiting and there is a beautiful sense of serenity. The paintings are superb by Whistler, Metcalf, Thayer and Dewing, all contemporaries of Freer who was their patron. I love the Art for Art’s Sake exhibit and am inspired to read more of the ‘Pot of Paint’ court case between Ruskin and Whistler (I find out later that the book is out of print). For my BA art history dissertation I nearly wrote a thesis on William Morris, extolling the virtues of form and function in art, but it never quite got off the ground, so I chose another subject. I am now inspired to go back and write it but this time from Whistler’s point of view, not Morris’ or Ruskin’s. The “nocturne” paintings really impress me, especially ‘The White Lilacs’ by Metcalf, which is sadly hung next to the men’s room. A poor celebration for the painting. The Peacock Room is incredibly dark and foreboding and did not entice many visitors, who wander in and straight out again, while I sit and read about the room and study the magnificent walls with their gold and silver peacock feathers.

I wander from the Freer to the Sackler Gallery, as the two are co-joined, and view the stunning Luxuries of the Silk Road exhibit. Even the museum store is impressive and I buy a floaty pen and some green tea to drink in the hotel. I walk back through the Freer spend eons studying every artifact in the Buddhist sculpture gallery and finish the American painting section and the temporary exhibit,'Pretty Women: Freer and the Ideal of Feminine Beauty'

(http://www.asia.si.edu/exhibitions/default.htm) before exiting to the Mall. I capture The Smithsonian Castle before walking to The Natural History Museum. Knowing there is a café here I pass the impressive elephant in the atrium for a cup of marvelously refreshing chamomile tea and a turkey baguette. I wander through the dinosaurs and the bones and the dead things, the mammal section on which seems like a macabre zoo, with lions and tigers posed in mid-pounce. The second floor is dreadful! Corridor after corridor of shabby walls and nothingness, signifying torn-down exhibits. The African exhibit was well-done and I found the section on Somali women very engaging. The Sikh exhibit is interesting but visually disappointing. Like the dinosaurs and the bones it is poorly lit and the exhibits are placed in cases which are hard to read.

I move back to the art, walking what seemed for miles to the Art Museum. On the way, through the sculpture garden, I find a beautiful place where I should have had lunch, The Pavillion Café the design of which is modeled on the Paris Metro’s Art Deco style. The Art Museum is spectacular! Rooms upon rooms of fabulous art, most of which I haven’t seen before. The Turners are quite a revolution. I have never been a fan of his, but it seems I have been viewing the wrong pieces all these years, the Smithsonian seems to have all the best pieces in my opinion. I wander from room to room, each one more fabulous than the last, desperately trying not to miss anything. I see Renoirs, Monets, Manets, Morrisots, Degas, Reynolds, Gainsboroughs, Counstables and of course, Turners, to name but a few. With feet aching from pounding on marble and about a third of West Wing completed, I set off for the mall and the National Museum of American History to fulfill a promise to Kerry to pick up a postcard or pin from the Celia Cruz exhibition for his former boss, who is Cuban and a fan. It seems like miles back there and I almost call it a day for a return visit, but I make it in good time to visit the exhibit and find out that there are no postcards, nor other souvenirs, save biograhpies & CDs to be had. Not even for ready money!

I plan for a quickie supper with Kerry at, believe it or not, McDonalds, as I am ‘Jonsing’ for a burger or a chicken sandwich, but back at the hotel I find that Kerry has made plans for us to go out with Ron and a few other cronies. Being too tired for social interaction, and having just passed Crystal City’s finest in dining cuisine on my walk back to the hotel, I decide to remain and finish off Kerry’s roast beef sandwich from lunch, mercifully preserved by refrigeration in the room by the AC, along with a packet of peanut M&Ms and half a tube of Pringles from the hotel gift shop. Having finished my bath and starting my journal entry, Kerry returns having been to ‘Chilies’ and we turn in early for the night after I have recounted my day.

The following morning Kerry leaves for the Early Bird team breakfast before I take off for the hotel restaurant for a tea and toast extravaganza; the toast is really good and helped along by being super hot with good butter and good Swiss jam. I go back to the room to prepare for my day. After two days of lugging around too much stuff in my handbag I repack and finally hit upon the perfect spatial solution. With my route planned and bag repacked I head for the Metro and Federal Triangle and started with a photo-fest at the Old Post Office Pavilion where I take the elevator to the bell tower and then to the 12^th floor to see the stunning views of the Capital. From the Post Office Pavilion I walk, taking photos every step of the way, from Ben Franklin’s statue to the Department of Justice ending at The National Archives. I take what seems to be the tradesman’s entrance, as it appears the front steps are only used for galas (as seen in the movie, ‘National Treasure’). I go straight for the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights which has prompted a need to research why Article IV was started at the bottom of the page. Calligraphically it looks so wrong. The National Archives are splendidly displayed and I find out later from work that the same fabricator (Second Story) also built the exhibits in our museum at work. I fill my water bottle for the umpteenth time, and move onto the Museum of American History for another, more detailed, visit. It is another long walk in the heat and I stop for tea in the Pavilion Café. I am enchanted by the huge flowers in the garden; blooms as big as my head, which look like something out of ‘Alice in Wonderland’. By a macabre coincidence there is a piece of sculpture in the garden as a backdrop which looks just like the White Rabbit’s house. As I approach it it appears to move. What seems to be a three-dimensional miniature house is actually a two-dimensional element, and the perceived movement is the shift is perspective. Very clever!

In the Museum of American History I take literature and photos for Kerry on the tiny rural post office inside the museum. I view (in order) the restoration of the Star Spangled Banner and the women behind the glass who are giving it its spangle back, the polio exhibit, and most of the science and scientists exhibit. I try to follow along with the splitting of the atom (my 'O level' physics failed me, and I it) but the building of A-bomb seemed easier somehow. Oh dear! I notice that there are misspellings and some of the text is badly applied… I trundle through the First Ladies exhibit and the Julia Childs’ kitchen as well as the American Presidents, but some how miss Abe Lincoln’s hat! The American popular culture exhibit is closed so I leave the museum and meander across the Mall (there’s no other way of moving in this heat) to The Hirshorn Gallery to view some modern art. This gallery is as impressive as the Freer! Being a circular building makes it easy not to miss anything you start at one point and end up at the same point eventually. I am convinced that all galleries should be this shape. The current exhibit of Visual Music is quite stunning and I lap up a piece called ‘Lapis’ – a kaleidoscope of imagery set to a sitar music. I am quite mesmerized. The still exhibits are equally entertaining, including a huge pat of butter and column of wire coat hangers, very visually entertaining. The basement exhibits have a deeper, darker type of artwork which are repellent to me, so I return to the giant stick of butter for consolation (but this one is calorie-free!). I leave relatively early, which my feet aching to the point of no return, but they hold out just long enough for me to stop in Crystal City at a great sushi bar I find to order a huge portion of 'chirasi' (raw fish on a bed of white rice rather than rolled). The hotel room is freezing and afraid Kerry will have one of his episodes if the room is warmed to any degree above freezing I buy a beautiful brushed cotton DC souvenir sweatshirt in the hotel gift store, but it’s still not enough, so I take Patrick O’Brien out by the poor to bask in the glorious heat. Thus ends my tour of DC, as today is spent waiting for Kerry’s conference to end before our plane back to the East Coast. I have loved DC, and I will love DC again. I vow to come back when the cherry blossoms are out.