Yes, I realize that “Day -2″ may not make sense. However, I arrived in D.C. two days early to sightsee/take a break from the day job, and so it feels like the convention has already started even though the fun doesn’t really kick into gear until Wednesday.
On the whole, I was determined to have the best day possible despite only sleeping for four hours on my redeye flight from San Francisco. I arrived at my hotel at 8am, after a nice conversation with my Afghani cab driver (we discussed India and the former Soviet Union, since we both lived there at different points), and was serendipitously able to check in early. I took an hour to freshen up and plan my activities for the day, and then forced myself to leave before the thought of going to bed lured me to ruin.
My first stop was the Library of Congress. This is an absolute must-see for any writer, reader, bibliophile, or history buff. The building itself is gorgeous, in that ornate, over-the-top way that you usually only see in European palaces, replete with statues, murals, mosaics, and acres of marble floors. For whatever reason, I’m totally in love with the mythology around Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom (and, according to Wikipedia, “peace, warfare, strategy, handicrafts, reason…and heroic endeavor”), and so I appreciated the giant tiled mosaic of Athena/Minerva in the Great Hall. I salivated over the grand reading room, a circular temple to books surrounded on the second-story balcony by some of the most revered Dead White Men of the arts. They also have one of the best-preserved copies of the Gutenberg Bible — and yes, I know that I should think this is awesome, given that the printing press changed the world, but a) I had already seen another copy in the British Library, and b) let’s face it, mechanical printing just cannot inspire the same awe as the manuscript illumination techniques that it replaced.
But I think my favorite part of the Library was the exhibit on the foundations of America, captured through drafts of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and various contemporary letters and books. The gallery led up to a room holding a recreation of all of the books in Thomas Jefferson’s private library (a combination of the books he sold to the US and exact-edition replacements of the portion of his library destroyed by fire in the 1850s). I may be in love with my Kindle now, but will I someday regret not having a library that can stand the test of time? Then again, it’s not like I’m reading Plutarch and Plato, so perhaps the Library of Congress wouldn’t be interested in my collection anyway.
Overwhelmed and in love and filled with the desire to go forth and read every book in existence, I walked out into the gorgeous summer day and set off in the direction of the National Mall. After walking past the Capitol, inadvertently checking out a Capitol policeman on a bike (I claim this as research), and strolling past staffers and tourists sitting around the Capitol Reflecting Pool, I made it to my next stop — the relatively new Museum of the American Indian, part of the Smithsonian system.
The building itself is worth seeing — with its curving lines, its warm stone, and the gardens and cascading waterfalls around it, it felt like a particularly lush version of the cliff-dwellings of some of the Southwest tribes. Even better, my first stop was their cafe, and I recommend it if you’re looking for someplace to eat on the Mall. Since entrance to all of the Smithsonian museums is free, you can go to the cafe anytime. It is cafeteria style, with different stations representing five different traditional cuisines of the Americas. My tray ended up being somewhat random — chicken mole verde tacos, shrimp and scallop ceviche, and tortilla chips that I added to eat the ceviche with. The tacos were perfect, as was the salsa that came with the chips; the ceviche was slightly disappointing, but I think that’s because I realized too late that there were many other things I would have rather tried, since I can get ceviche in San Francisco quite easily. Then again, I can also get Mexican food, but these tacos were quite different, and so well worth the choice.
I spent a couple of hours wandering around the museum itself. The curators seem to have done quite a good job of working with the various tribes to tell their own unique stories and shed light on the traditional ways while exploring how their lives have changed in the five hundred years since Columbus’s arrival. Perhaps I have an overdeveloped sense of empathy, but some of the exhibits made me a bit teary-eyed (particularly when considering the devastating impact that disease had on the inhabitants of the Americas, and — again, I’m betraying my bibliophilia — thinking about all we lost when Cortez burned the Aztec libraries).
By this time, it was almost three o’clock, and my energy was rapidly failing. I made an aborted attempt to see the National Archives, but since I’ve seen them before and the wait was 45 minutes, I decided to try again tomorrow. I came back to my hotel and took a two-hour nap; as a sign of how dead tired I was, when my alarm went off it took forever for me to figure out what the sound was, and then I thought it was 5:30am.
As tempting as it was to stay in bed, I dragged myself up, redressed, and eventually made it out in search of dinner. My hotel is right on Dupont Circle, and I walked down one of the streets radiating off the circle in search of Five Guys Burgers. It’s apparently home to the best burgers in D.C., and reviewers on Yelp compared it favorably to California’s In-n-Out chain. I had their regular burger (actually a double cheeseburger) and fries. The burger was undeniably tasty, and I scarfed it down — but I didn’t think the fries were either crispy enough of soft enough, and instead were in some sort of weird in-between place that I wasn’t a fan of. Then again, I’m not a fan of In-n-Out’s fries either, since I think they sometimes taste too starchy. Ultimately, in the battle between Five Guys and In-n-Out, I think it comes down to two things: 1) Five Guys doesn’t have milkshakes, and 2) a review they posted on their wall got it right when it said something along the lines of “Five Guys has the ambience of a large tiled bathroom”. In-n-Out is tiled too, but it seems brighter and a little bit cleaner. So, In-n-Out is victorious, but I would eat at Five Guys again if I’m back in the area and in search of a delicious heart attack.
I wrapped up my night on the patio of a nearby Starbucks, planning out which activities/workshops to attend at the conference. So, all in all, it was a great day — I didn’t push myself as hard to sightsee as perhaps I should have, but since my top priority is being prepped for Nationals, I don’t regret it at all. I have more sightseeing planned for tomorrow, followed by dinner with some of my fellow Golden Heart finalists. Wednesday’s coming all too fast!
Are you going to Nationals? Alternatively, do you have recommendations for what I should see in D.C.?
Posted on 13 July 2009 *
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