The Roommate and I, who have been friends for many years but have never traveled together, cashed in some Southwest Rapid Rewards free tickets and went to Washington, D.C. for the Memorial Day weekend. We chose Washington, D.C. because (a) when you’re flying for free, you want to fly as far as possible, and in the Southwest world, L.A. to D.C. is about as far as it gets, (b) the Roommate had never been there, and (c) although I have been there many times and even lived there as a small child, I seriously cannot get enough of the place. More importantly, there were Rapid Rewards tickets available from LAX to Baltimore despite the holiday. I want to assure you, dearest family and friends who wonder why I never visit them, that there were no Rapid Rewards tickets available from LAX to your town. Really, I looked. Sorry.So even though I have been blogging for one entire year, this is actually my inaugural Vacation Recap Blog. I think the time it took for me to get around to doing this earns me some sort of blogging medal. And evidences my need to take more vacations. But without further delay…
Saturday
We spent most of Saturday on a plane. And in some airports—namely, LAX and Midway, Chicago’s stepchild airport (and Southwest sure loves stepchild airports). And then on another plane. And then in a rental car as we drove from Baltimore to our hotel in Northern Virginia in the middle of the night. And I know what you’re thinking at this point—this Vacation Recap Blog is going down the tubes pretty fast. Somebody take her medal away.
But wait! Things got infinitely more interesting as soon as we finally pulled into the driveway of the Hyatt Regency in Crystal City, where we discovered that our hotel was serving as HQ for the Rolling Thunder POW/MIA Memorial Day Motorcycle Rally! There were snazzy motorcycles everywhere. And, even at the late hour, the hotel was absolutely crawling with biker veterans, their wives, their children, and even their grandchildren—all three generations of which were decked out in leather or denim vests with five thousand patches apiece. I don’t know if they were merit badges or what, but I instantly decided that, if and when I ever get around to forming my scooter gang, patches will play a prominent role.
Sunday
Since we're both churchgoers, the Roommate and I normally do nothing on Sundays but sleep, go to church, and watch the occasional Jane Austen-themed Masterpiece Theater. But since we had such limited time in D.C., we decided to pad the itinerary with stuff we hoped was sufficiently reverential and appropriate given the purpose of the holiday. We started the day by attending a local congregation of our church. As we were waiting for the valet to bring the rental car around so we could go, we made friends with some of the Rolling Thunder crowd. They told us that over 700,000 bikes would be participating in the rally and that we should drive by the Pentagon parking lot because the entire thing was full of motorcycles. Unfortunately, we missed our opportunity to do so while at church, which was not held at the Pentagon, but we did run into this same biker family around town later, thus solidifying our relationship as eternal BFFs.
After church, we took the metro up to the Mall and went to the Holocaust Memorial Museum. I had been there before, but not to the permanent exhibit, which requires reservations. Luckily, the Roommate had the wherewithal to make such reservations, and it was a life-changer. I thought I knew everything horrible there was to know about the Holocaust, but I was sorely mistaken. The enormity and the atrocity are found in the details, of which the Museum provides plenty. You cannot help but think “How on earth could this happen in modern times?” and then you leave the exhibit and see books in the gift shop on Darfur and Rwanda and realize that genocide is still happening and we let it happen. If you are ever in D.C., you simply must attend the permanent exhibit; however, you probably shouldn’t bring small children as the photos and video footage are naturally disturbing.
Thoroughly depressed after the Holocaust Museum, and hungry due to inadvertently skipping breakfast and lunch, the Roommate and I made fast friends with an overpriced ice cream vendor on the Mall, a D.C. youth with surly dreadlocks and an attitude to match. We asked him questions about the weather (abnormally nice for this time of year) and how long he’d been working that day. He pouted that he was stuck there until they sent someone else to relieve him, and that working for that particular ice cream stand was “like a sweatshop.” We giggled at the thought of anything related to ice cream being sweaty or especially arduous. Just eat some ice cream to ease your employment-related pain, kid. Personally, I think I would rather enjoy sitting under a big umbrella, looking at the Capitol and selling ice cream all the day long were it not for what I assume to be very bad pay, but the grass is always greener on the other side, I guess.
After our ice cream appetizer, we rode the metro to Dupont Circle and walked straight into the first Indian restaurant we found. Indian restaurants are a dime a dozen in D.C., but somehow fate led us to the best one ever, Heritage India. They had this awesome tapas menu, which enabled us to try out lots of different things. And yes, they even called it a “tapas” menu, despite the Spanish origins of that word, and how could they not, seeing as tapas are the hottest thing in D.C. right now, the way gourmet cupcakes are in L.A. I’m pretty sure if you walk down an ordinary D.C. street on an ordinary day, you will hear colloquialisms like, “I had a tapas weekend,” or “He looked so tapas yesterday.” Oh yeah, have I mentioned that food in D.C. is like half the price of that in L.A. (well, so long as you aren’t buying it in a museum food court)? This was a linen-napkin restaurant with fast-food prices. Totally tapas.
After dinner it was time for some Memorial Day memorializing back in the heart of things. We hit the Washington Memorial, the WWII Memorial, and walked the length of the reflecting pool to the Lincoln Memorial. To my dismay, the Roommate was not able to recite the entire Gettysburg Address from memory, the way that PDaddy had five years prior on another visit to the Lincoln Memorial, but I guess we're still friends. After taking a few pics of Abe, we stopped by my personal favorite, the Korean War Memorial (pictured above), followed by the famous Vietnam War Memorial and the lesser-known Vietnam Women’s Memorial. At this last stop, we learned that the nurses serving in the Vietnam War were able to save 97% of the soldiers that made it to the hospital. Based on that figure, which was cast in bronze, so you know it’s absolutely true, I think the DoD should make improving transport of the wounded a primary concern. Perhaps they already have and they just forgot to call and tell me. Anyhow, given the holiday, all the memorials were crowded by pensive people and decked out in flowers, photos, letters, cigarettes, and other things left behind to honor those who lost their lives so we could continue living our own in the obscenely comfortable manner to which we have grown accustomed. There were a lot of Rolling Thunder participants in their patchy vests at the Vietnam Memorial, rubbing pencils on small slips of paper to get an imprint of a particular name etched on the wall. The sun went down as we watched this, and despite the fact that it was one day early and there were no barbecues or swimming parties or other summer kick-off things going on, it was the best Memorial Day ever.
We made a good faith effort to walk back up to the Capitol to catch the tail end of the PBS Memorial Day concert going on there, but by the time we reached it, people were starting to sneak out for an early seat on the metro, so we turned around. We briefly rested our really tired feet on the crowded ride back to Crystal City, and on the excruciatingly painful walk from the station to the hotel, we passed a Cold Stone Creamery that had just closed. Some other tourists had already begun beating on the glass window begging the employees to reopen for them and the Roommate and I, apparently quite the joiners, started begging to get in as well. The poor Cold Stone employees, who had nothing to personally gain from working longer than required on a holiday weekend, obliged us after the other tourists promised them a hefty tip. The only problem was that the other tourists stiffed them on it, and I finally began to believe that working conditions in the ice cream business were, indeed, approaching sweatshop-like levels. We tried to compensate by providing a hefty tip of our own, making it the most expensive ice cream I have ever eaten. It was also the biggest ice cream to non-ice cream ratio of food I had ever consumed in one day, but hey, I was on vacation.
I think it’s time I was given a second medal… this one for Lengthiest Vacation Recap Blog Ever. That’s right, folks, we are only halfway through. Be sure to tune in tomorrow (er... or sometime thereafter) for “Monday,” which promises to be challenged in greatness only by the concurrently published “Tuesday.” Sorry to be so long-winded, but I guess that’s the benefit of Vacation Recap Blogs—you can ramble as long as you like and yet your friends can just skim it if they don’t have the time or patience to read it. I always love a good win-win situation. I also love receiving medals.
