Day One in Washington

I've not spent much time in Washington. I guess I have the same lack of interest as my parents, as I think we came here exactly once when I was growing up, around 1964. All I remember was the Wright Brothers plane because I was obsessed with the Wright Brothers at the time and seeing JFK's grave at Arlington Cemetery, though I also remember my father giving me hard time for being whiny while standing on line to see the grave. I came down once for a day with biz school friends, and I brought my kids down for a weekend once but nobody ever was interested in going again.

This time, I was looking for a place that was close enough to go for a short time where there was a reasonable variety of stuff to do. So here I am.

This day played out like most days we're on vacation. I get up long before anyone else in my family even thinks about it. I really can't stay in bed past 8:30, maybe 9 and the others are all happy staying in bed until 11 if not prompted to do otherwise. This is fine with me. I love my family but getting up early gives me a chance to have my own space.

Whenever we travel I go for morning walks with no particular destination or route in mind. I best way I can describe it is that I want to know where I am. Whether this is inherently interesting or not depends obviously on where we're staying. Right now we're staying in an area heavy with Embassies and not too far from Georgetown, so I headed over that way.

I've been in Georgetown, but not for many years and my memory is foggy enough that I suspect I'd been bar hopping before getting there. I'm not sure. But it's a very nice place to walk on a cold morning before the stores are open. The commercial street is varied enough that it doesn't look like a mall and the side streets are beautiful, lined with pretty old houses and brick sidewalks. It's not unlike parts of Old City in Philadelphia, but more upscale looking. The main drag exhibits the split personality of the place. It's a very upscale college area, so the stores are mostly pretty high end, like Kate Spade and MaxMara, but the food places are all pizza, pubs, and various Asian, Indian and Mexican restaurants.

On the way I crossed over a nice park alongside a stream. If it were warmer I'd have taken one of the bikes that the hotel has for guests (they also have rental bikes on the street like in Paris) but walking across was fine.

Once back my daughter arose and we headed out for a fun-filled day of looking at things about dead people. I know that sounds flip, but package together the Lincoln Memorial, followed by the Vietnam War Memorial and then the Holocaust Museum and that's a lot of dead people. Oddly enough, I enjoyed it thoroughly. The Lincoln Memorial is familiar from pictures but that sucker's big. The text of his Second Inaugural Address, one of the great speeches of the modern age, is on one of the walls and it nearly moved me to tears to read it in that spot.

As aware as I was of the building of the Vietnam War Memorial, I never had a sense for what it looked like and I was almost thrown by its scale and simplicity. Walking slowly along, seeing name after name after name, brought the entire tragedy top of mind again. I was lucky enough to have been too young to get drafted. My 18th birthday year was the last year of the dreaded draft lottery and I was assigned a number, but the war had ended, they did not draft anyone born in 1955, and they eliminated the draft soon afterward.

The Holocaust Museum was more of an immersive experience. I have some issues with the design of the place. There was some interesting and important information displays in places that were bottlenecks for the good-sized crowd and it was tough to see some things. But you can't deny the power of story and you can't not feel the weight of the horror. My family on both sides left Europe even before World War I so I have no relatives who were involved. But I certainly know plenty of people who do, and you can't feel Jewish and not feel the pain.

At this point we'd had enough death and despair and wanted to get something to eat, so we cabbed it to Georgetown, where we had lunch and then walked up and down the street and looked and occasionally shopped in stores. Finally dinner at the hotel, the highlight of which were perhaps the most amazing french fries I've ever had. The taste was the good news, the fact that they were fried in duck fat is perhaps not such good news, buit they were very delicious and I was able to eat less than half of them.