Reactionary

It’s almost 10AM and I’m still in the hotel, trying to decide what to do about breakfast. I could go down the hotel restaurant with the stuffy clientele or get room service for $$$ and I could see them tacking on an extra charge for a pickup fee since I’ll be checking out today. Lastly, I could go down to Union Station which the website shows as having tons of places to eat but then I’d have my luggage and I’d be there forever since my train isn’t until 1325. The cute cafe I saw yesterday isn’t open for breakfast. I checked.

I walked a little up Embassy Row this morning and saw the Greek, Irish, Pakistani, and Dutch embassies. I have no clue where the UK’s is. What a job, that. UK ambassador to the United States. How do you become an ambassador anyway? The houses are huge though with small, if any, grounds. How cool would it be to work at an embassy. I wonder how you get jobs like that. I’m sick of mine,.

Yesterday, I logged in a brutal day of Arlington, the Capitol, the Mall, the Supreme Court, Library of Congress, House and Senate office buildings, the White House, and Georgetown. All attractions other than Arlington were closed unfortunately. Some guy who had been turned away at the Library of Congress along with me said he should have lied and said he was part of the special group going in to see it. Most of Capitol Hill was under renovations or under construction. I guess that’s all done with Congress is out. They should be back soon, though, to more dragging of feet.

I did more sightseeing than I had wanted to but it was nice. The city’s so big and streets so wide, you have to do a lot of walking to get from one place to another. But it’s close to home, closer than New York if you count by how long you have to be on a train so I’ll be back.

It’s a quiet city. I could barely sleep at the hotel because I’m so used to street noise. A heavy whirring traffic soundtrack to me means all is well with the world. Highways have kind of been put out of the way, though they’re huge and busy, they’re barely ever seen. Businesses appear in spurts. Streets are wide and clean, so is the Metro. It’s worthy of being the nation’s capital and it feels like it. It doesn’t have New York’s or even Philadelphia’s noise and dirt. Personality-wise, it’s half old money New England and half old South. There’s a lot of wildlife, birds, bugs, plants. I wonder what it would be like to live here. I wonder how you get on if you don’t work for the government. There don’t seem to be many bigger grocery stores. Are people too busy to cook? I saw a Safeway.com truck yesterday and I wondered how many people got their groceries that way. As a Safeway.com user, I love it, and Philly has a lot more grocery stores than DC appears to.

I didn’t see a lot of the sites and I have to put those on a to do list of sorts. I have to go inside practically all of them and then I have yet to see the Lincoln, Jefferson, and war memorials. I’d like to see Congress in session if that’s possible, the Supreme Court without the scaffolding (lovely building otherwise), the White House (you must get on some kind of watch list if you go visit), other Smithsonian buildings, Georgetown University, the Pentagon, and nearby Alexandria. There’s tons to see down here, I hadn’t realized it. And it can be done in a day trip from Philly as well. Leave on the 7AM train and come back on the 7PM. Amtrak runs hourly trains. I’ve done that for New York shopping sprees and it takes less time to get here than New York. September weekends are booked for me, but I’ll have to come back in the fall when the air’s cool.

Posted on September 4th, 2006 under Life, Travels •  Print •  Email • RSS 2.0 feed • Leave a response, or trackback