So I bought my ticket from San Francisco to DC thinking that it would be a good idea to catch an overnight flight, arriving on the East Coast early in the morning, and then embarking on a day of sightseeing refreshed and relaxed after a good sleep on the plane. One word sums up this hoped for outcome: Fail.
Turns out that the flight is only four and a half hours long, and after two or so of those hours, turbulence (especially one bump in particular, which woke everyone up and caused quite a lot of loud blaspheming in the cabin) kept me awake right up until touch down at Dulles airport (which, I might add, is a really crap airport, notable only for it’s quasi-futuristic buses-on-elevators that take you from one terminal to another). So instead of arriving in DC refreshed and ready for a day of touristastic action, I arrived sans sleep and mildly traumatised.
However, one bonus of being kept awake was watching the lights of the various towns, cities and freeways criss-cross the landscape below as we flew towards the sunrise. It was quite pretty, so I can’t complain too much about it all.
Once at the airport, Claire arrived and whisked me away to Wheaton (a suburb on the outskirts of DC, just beyond the beltway) from which we caught the train into the heart of downtown. This was an extremely cunning move, as it meant that when we came to leave the city, we didn’t have to fight our way through the commuter traffic, training out beyond the worst of it, and escaping to the nearest highway as quickly as possible. Nice work Claire on that one.
We arrived in downtown DC early (7.30ish) and found a city that seemed to be in the process of having all of its footpaths scrubbed clean. It was quite nice to wander around a big city during the freshness of the morning just after it itself had been freshened up, although finding a cafe that served a decent breakfast proved difficult, and the coffee I eventually found was perhaps the worst espresso I have had in my entire life (so burnt, so tasting like marzipan, so wrong). The first hour or so was spent in search of food, and found us wandering around the bit with the big buildings and the hotels and the standard “we’re downtown in a big city” type stuff. But after we were fed and watered, we made out way to the National Mall…
…which is awesome. Say what you will about Americans (and Claire frequently does so, loudly), but they build an excellent monument.
The next six or seven or more hours were spent wandering up and down this thin strip of land. In that time we walked past or through: the Washington Monument (which dominates everything – it really is huge); the World War II Memorial; the Lincoln Memorial (best bit, IMHO); the Vietnam War Memorial; and two Smithsonian, the Air and Space, and the Natural History, Museums. Plus there were a couple of cafes in there as well. I didn’t take any photos of those, although I think it was agreed by both of us that the free entry into the Natural History museum was somewhat undermined by the phenomenal price of the food inside them. More fool us, I guess.
We failed to make it to Capitol Hill, which was a bit sucky, but you could seriously lose several days just on the Mall without even trying, so I reckon we did ok in the end with the one we had.
On the way back though, we did make a point of standing in front of the Whitehouse for the ultimate tourist photograph. My life is now complete. No, wait…
After negotiating the public transport back to the car (which hadn’t been stolen, thankfully), we headed out to Claire’s family friend’s house in Ellicott City, Maryland, which turned out to be a freakin’ huge place with many, many rooms. Wayne works for the NZ government in DC, so I guess that particular night’s accommodation was provided to us by your tax dollars. Nice work everyone. Once there, we headed out to dinner in the old part of the City, and afterwards on to a pub to sample the local beer. I have to say that my trip so far has disabused me of the notion that American beer is crap, it just appears that they export the crap stuff (kind of like us and Steinlager, I guess). We ended up trying many different types of really excellent beers in a range of different styles, and as many of them were also quite strong, and I hadn’t really slept for nearing on 34 hours by that stage, by the time the night drew to a close I was well toasted.
The best bit about the night though, was the band playing in the corner of the pub. They were ok, not super flash, and had been playing a lot of mid-1990s classics for most of the evening, but then they launched into a Damien Rice song, followed by another (after some urging by Claire), and then another. Which was excellent, even if a little scratchy in places. It’ll come as no surprise that I thought this was pretty neat, but then they asked whether anyone had heard of Flight of the Concords, and proceeded to belt out an excellent cover of Business Time. This proved to be the perfect end to a long day, so we shook their hands, and staggered off home to sleep.
The following day, we hopped in the car, and with the help of essential navigational aids (Mapquest is seriously the bomb), we set out to go from Ellicott City, Maryland, to Truro, Cape Cod, Massachusetts – a trip of 500 miles through seven different US states. Basically, we were planning on driving the same distance that I’ll be walking on the trail in Spain over the course of a month or more, in a day.
And we almost did it, too.
In the end, we made it as far as Bourne, Massachusetts, rolling into a camping ground 15 minutes before they closed, pitching the tent in the dark, and collapsing into it after a gin or two. The camp site was pretty much deserted, and if you looked in one direction it seemed like we were camped in a forest way out in the middle of nowhere. But, if you looked in the other direction, it turned out we were about 100 metres away from the State Highway 6. I didn’t sleep very well, but after ten hours driving, Claire was asleep in about a second.
The next day, we headed out to Cape Cod so Claire could dip her toes in the Atlantic (cold, apparently) and we could visit Newcomb Hollow Beach. There was a wreck of a 19th century schooner that had been washed up onto the beach near where we stopped which was also very cool. Cape Cod is really quite lovely, even though we were there on quite a dull and cloudy day, especially all the cool little towns that dot its length.
From there, we headed to Plymouth to see the rock. Chalk this up as another fail, as they’re busy repairing the pavilion that stands above it, hiding the rock from view in the process. So we gave up on that, and headed up to Boston.
Boston has an air of permanence I haven’t encountered anywhere before. The buildings are solid and brick, the architecture is impressive and at times crenellated. We drove into the city, thinking we’d do the old DC trick park on the outskirts, and train into the place we were staying. Turns out parking in Boston is a complete nightmare, and after an hour or more of fruitless driving about the place (Beacon Street. Seriously, it appears you can navigate Boston as long as you know where this street is), we ended up giving in and purchasing a ticket to go park in one of the visitor parking lots dotted about the city. This meant we arrived quite late into the city, and failed to get to MIT or Harvard, which had been the original plan. It was also raining, so exploring meant getting wet and cold, and we decided we weren’t up for it.
But we were up for a huge steak dinner at an Irish Bar in Boston. And it was good.
We stayed at the daughter of one of Claire’s supervisors’ apartment, not to far from the centre of town. Their place was lovely, and while we thought we were in for an early night, it turned out that Cate and Larry (her husband) were keen to talk and drink the night away. Much whisky, bourbon and rye (which I hadn’t tried before, and rather enjoyed) were sampled by myself and Larry, and it turned out Claire and I were the first New Zealander’s either of them had met before. Hopefully we left a good impression, we certainly didn’t leave much alcohol.
The next day, with a surprisingly small hangover (thanks, I suspect, to the huge steak dinner), we headed down to the Boston Common and watched the squirrels play, ate bagels and looked at more memorials. While the day before had been rainy and cold, the day on the Common was warm and sunny, was a shame to leave.
But we did, as we needed to make it back to Syracuse by that evening. Which we did, through what would appear to be one continuous forest from Boston to Syracuse, and now we’re here, eating savouries heated in the oven, and watching Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.