Friday - Day ThreeBefore we crashed too hard & before we ordered the movie last night, Philip handed me the tour brochure that we got from the bellman and asked me what I was interested in. There were two tours that we thought we might consider - one that went to the White House, the Capitol, the Lincoln Memorial, the Korean War Memorial, the Smithsonian, the Kennedy Gravesites, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers, and the US Marine Memorial, and the other that went to the Jefferson Memorial, the Roosevelt memorial, Ford's Theater (where Lincoln was shot) & the Lincoln Museum, the Peterson House (where Lincoln died), the National Air and Space Museum, and Mount Vernon (George Washington's home). However, as we were so tired that our posteriors were dragging out our footprints (to quote a wise woman I once knew), we failed to book any tours. We decided to sleep in and then do our own tour. So at eleven o'clock, after Nico has had breakfast (the most important meal of the day - NB) we set out on foot to the Washington Monument, which we can see from our window. We pass by the White House first of all. All approaches to it have been blocked to normal vehicular traffic, and one can only go by on foot or on approval from the guards. We pass a huge line of people filing into the gates. As they pass the wrought iron fence they are treated to a commentary broadcast over speakers artfully concealed in the foliage. We shove our way through the line, and proceed to the East Lawn, where we shoot pictures of the residence.
Then on to the Old Executive Office Building. This is the beginning of an interrogation from Nico, who asks question after question after question after question, as Philip is supposedly the ultimate authority on American history (well...). So here are some of my questions (NB), which were not all satisfactorily answered. 1. Why is it the Old Executive Office Building? Philip tells me the new Executive Offices are in the White House (the Oval Office is the Executive Office, he says). So why is that? And which president decided to put his Executive Office in the White House? And when? (Philip, after many more questions, fashions his fingers in the shape of a gun, aims it at his wife's head, and fires.)
We then proceed to the Washington Monument, an enormous obeslisk at one end of the National Mall, in the centre of all the major monuments in the city. It is imposing and imperious and closed for renovations. It creates a new wave of questions. 2. Why is this monument shaped differently from the others? Why is it an obelisk rather than a classical temple (like the Lincoln Memorial & the Jefferson Memorial and even like tha Capitol Building and the White House)? Does that mean it was built at a different time from the others? Who built it? Who designed it? Did Washington know he was getting a monument? Philip keeps his trigger finger in his pocket. We head towards the Jefferson Memorial, which lies on the other side of a tidal basin, and which our tour brochure advertised as "Washington's most beautiful memorial". We are flanked by joggers and other tourists. As we near the water we see people and ducks out on it, the people in paddle boats, and the ducks along the side eyeing passersby with greedy beady eyes. We also see a construction crane and lots of scaffolding around the monument. Also closed. Drat.
So we move on along the Reflecting Pool towards the Lincoln Memorial. This we figure is so significant to the population of the USA (Lincoln freed the slaves) that it has to be open. Also the people who run Washington wouldn't be so mean as to close THREE monuments in the heart of summer, would they? Indeed, as the swarms of people on the steps of the memorial attest, it is open. However, even here there is scaffolding - some restoration appears to be going on at the ceiling level, but it is not enough to close the memorial down completely. We stare at the giant Lincoln brooding in his chair, and read the Gettysburg address on one side of the memorial, and the Emancipation Proclamation couched in his second inaugural address on the other side of the memorial.
We buy lunch from a concession stand nearby - Philip has a hot dog and coke and I have a yogurt (it being warm and me not being very hungry) and sit under some trees and feed the birds. Thus refreshed, we move on to the Korean War Memorial, a relatively new memorial. This memorial was very interesting. It is not your typical statue-thingie. What it is is a replication of soldiers in the field. There are maybe twelve or twenty of them, bronze statues arranged in a triangular pattern, their faces showing the fatigue, horror and despair of war. They all wear rain capes, and they look doomed. Along the side of this are the names of the UN countries that sent forces to help hold the border of South Korea against the north. Further on, completing the point of the triangle, are more inscriptions: this time, these are the casualties in the war - the US number first, followed by the UN number. At the very apex of the triangle is a four-foot wall of polished granite, in which is inscribed FREEDOM IS NOT FREE. Behind this is a circular fountain.
We leave this memorial a little sobered, and cross the park to the Vietnam War Memorial. This is far more simple, just a wall of polished granite set into a small hill, that starts off small and tapers off again, but which rises in the middle to a point twice or three times the size of a man.
On this are inscribed the names of the soldiers who died in the war. Each section of the wall is another year, so that we can see and feel the enormity and the absurdity of the wall at its height. Hundreds of people are filing past the wall, and there is a park serviceman nearby with a ladder. Occasionally people will go up to him and ask him to make a rubbing of one of the names, who is one of their relatives of friends. He then gets out the ladder and obliges. At different parts of the wall are flowers, flags, other offerings to the memories of the dead.
We continue on towards the Washington Monument (our goal is far beyond that - the Capitol Building), and on the way we pass the memorial to the signers of the Declaration of Independenee. This memorial is 24 years old, having been unveiled in 1976 for the Bicentennial celebrations. It is a little island in a large pond, where each signature has been carved in stone and arranged according to the colony from which each man came. There we saw the signatures of Benjamin Franklin, replete with flourishes, of Samuel Adams (after whom the beer is named), of John Adams, of Thomas Jefferson, and, larger than them all, the signature of John Hancock, who is primarily remembered for the size of his signature (who says size don't count?)
The trek to the Capitol is long and thirsty. It also takes us over our old stamping ground, the National Mall, where the Folklife Festival has just closed. In the detritus of that festival, busily being cleared away, we discover that the featured cultures this year were El Rio, Tibet, and Washington D.C. itself. We pass an enclosure where mini Tibetan pieces still stand around. As we cross streets and near the Capitol, we shoot photos from different angles. It is a most beautiful building, incredibly imposing, perfectly balanced, classically Greek, and much larger than one imagines. After we have approached it from the back and walked around to the front (visitors') entrance, which, grand as the back is, is even grander, we move to go inside it. We are told by the guard on duty that we have to join a line - either one for a self-guided tour, or one for a guided tour. As we have been guiding ourselves all day, and as Nico has so many questions, we decide to join the guided tour. This lasts for 30 minutes, which is less time than we spend in the queue, but which doesn't leave Nico with too many questions. We marvel at the rotunda, whose dome is 186 ft tall (higher than the Statue of Liberty *without* the pedestal), and whose walls are adorned with perfect numbers of historical paintings. Then we proceed into a statuary that used to be the old chamber of the House of Representatives, and which is designed in such a way that conversations held on one side of the room can clearly be heard on the other. Way to hold a parliament.
By the time we are finished with this tour we have been walking around for seven hours - almost as long as we drove yesterday. We decide enough is enough and limp back to the hotel. On arriving at the hotel, checking email and the message board, we discover from Ruse that the IB results have reached the college. Philip calls him to obtain them. We are both relatively pleased (actually we are VERY pleased) and we head off happily to dinner. |
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