Just a few more hours!

I'm still packing, because I'm an incredibly slow packer. But somehow or other, Big Mama and I will be on a plane tomorrow morning at 8 am. She has to be on the slim side this time, since my little flight from Dublin to Edinburgh has more restrictions on baggage weight...I'm trying to slim her down but when I'm not looking she just swallows up more and more stuff. Sigh.

Tomorrow will be a long day - first leg is SFO to Toronto, long layover there, then 8:40 pm their time I board the flight to Dublin, which will arrive at 8 am their time, by which time I'll be quite the worse for the wear, I suppose. But of course it's vacation, and it's long-awaited and much-needed, so I'll muddle through.

And, friends, I promise that this will be the most boring post of the trip - just wanted to get things started!

Back to rearranging and staring at my piles of stuff to pack-
E

If all goes according to plan...

...July will find me in Scotland and Ireland.

Hooray! It wasn't until I booked my (relatively less expensive than in the recent past) plane tickets that I realized afresh how much I love traveling, how much joy it brings me. Just having these books on my desk and looking through them when I have time makes me quite happy - sometimes I take them to bed at night even though I know I'll fall asleep within a minute or two and won't get much actual reading done.

It's been a rough year, work-wise, and it's amazing how changed I feel having something to look forward to. I feel fortunate to have the time and money to travel, now more than ever. And I look forward to blogging along the way. Meanwhile, I have to stop reading confirmation booking e-mails in an Irish accent to my friend at work - I think it might be a little annoying.

See you back here in a few months!

Just a few more thoughts...

Wow, can't believe I've been home for over a week. It's always strange and a little sad how fast vacation recedes into the past once you're home, knowwhatimean?

I wanted to close up this summer's blog with just a few random things that never made it in the other posts, so here we go:

*Friendliness of New Yorkers:
At various times as we traipsed through the streets/subways/taxis/buses, we were pleasantly surprised to find how friendly and downright kind various people were to us. I guess I'd just bought into the rude New Yorker hype, so I didn't expect it. Right on the first night, as we struggled with our suitcases and our map, trying to figure out how to get to the hotel from the subway stop, two guys stopped and asked if we needed help. They even offered to carry our luggage. One guy was sort of beefy with a tight black t-shirt that said "Personal Trainer". We said a sheepish "no, thanks", but now as I write this, I'm wondering why we did that. :)

Other friendly encounters included a few different folks who asked if we needed help when they saw us with our map out, and our pal Raul, who we met on the subway one night. He asked us which direction the train was going as he hopped on - luckily, I knew - and then went on to say that he worked at the MAC counter at Macy's and if we came by to see him, he'd make us look "fierce". (You gotta imagine him saying that with a soft voice and the complete NY accent, no r sound at all.) We declined, but I do wonder what we may have ended up looking like after paying him a visit.

*But, on the other hand:
One night we came back to the Pod quite hungry but not up for a dinner out, plus it was pretty late. Gretchen headed to the corner near us where there was a grocery store - I offered to go with but we decided it was perfectly safe. She went, she came back - with some delicious snacks and a story about a few 10 year old boys who were hanging out in front of the store. As she was walking out, one of them grabbed her butt (!) and then ran away. So young and yet so cheeky!

*Colorful subway characters:
We saw so many...a preacher who handed out lists of prophecy to all who would take them, a man who came into the car and started in on a diatribe against the city's plans to eradicate some low-income housing, a happy group of teenagers, one of whom was singing loudly, American-Idol style, and promised us all that we'd see her on the big screen someday. On a more serious note, we saw several very young families whose parenting attempts were painful to watch. We heard one frustrated subway rider yell to those pushing to get on at the station "Everybody back the f___ up so we can get the f___ off!" While I wouldn't say it that way, I identified with the sentiment.

*Overheard conversations:
In the Library Hotel elevator, two executive types headed up to a meeting in the penthouse suite were talking about Elmo, or rather the gentleman who plays him. Apparently he had done an appearance with their firm recently, and "spent the whole time in the corner talking on the phone to his agent!". Tsk tsk, Elmo, you have appearances to keep up...

On the train to D.C., I was jammed in with three other women in a set of four seats that faced each other...two of them were coming from a series of meetings, clearly they were Madison Ave. types, maybe brand managers or something similar. They proceeded to debrief their whole day, but in code, never mentioning the actual clients or the products very clearly. "Those were so adorable!" one would say, and the other would say "you mean the small ones for the big client or the other ones?", and it was all I could do to ask what was so adorable and when would they be at a store near me??? (The consumerism of NYC had rubbed off on me, clearly).

*Cab/Train friends:
When both of the advertising ladies got off the train, the other passenger in our foursome and I had a far-ranging and very enjoyable conversation about many things - books, her job at Yahoo working to create new revenue streams for newspapers, how she used to live in S.F., public education, and where to eat in Washington D.C. (The Tabard Inn brunch, which we LOVED, was her recommendation). But what's funny is that our conversation started with "Were you eavesdropping on those other two ladies too?" And of course we both were.

Then, G and I shared a cab with a young woman who was visiting her boyfriend for the weekend...we did chit chat and turns out she works for the National Book Foundation, doing outreach with the National Book Award nominees and winners. I mentioned that a college friend of mine had been nominated for his graphic novel a few years back but hadn't won...and she said, "Oh, Gene, I love Gene! I wanted him to win so badly!" I agreed, and marveled that sometimes it really does seem like a small small world.

Thanks for reading, blog faithful! Til next time!

Goodbye to G...

Yesterday we said our goodbyes to Gretchen, who headed home one day before us. But never fear, we got the animal print robe picture in before she left...and, bonus, we posed on the treadmill!

Also, the night before G left, we headed out with the rest of America, it seems, to watch The Dark Knight - somewhere at a mall in Virginia, for us. We got small drinks,

and actually all thought the movie was very good. Even, I will say, thought-provoking. As one Slate reviewer wrote, the screenwriter "does more nuanced thinking about the war on terror than we've seen from the Bush administration in seven years."

Yesterday after G left, Lo and I dragged ourselves out on the town for a few more sights. I've tried to keep the weather complaints to a minimum on the blog, because after all, I'm on vacation, how bad can it be? Let's just say, though...walking around = getting very sticky very quickly.

Nevertheless, we did a pretty complete Mall tour - a few more works of art at the National Gallery first. (I got really into trying to see Wayne Thiebaud's cake painting, but sadly it is not currently on display.) Then we headed down the mall for a quick break at the fountain in the sculpture garden,
and on to the National Museum of Natural History. Right next to the room with the Hope Diamond, Lo found a crystal ball and pretended to be Madame Trelawney, complete with the dire warnings to HP. The weird thing is actually what the flash did when I took the picture - it's really just a plain quartz orb, but look, magic...

Then I pretended to be a bug on the wall, and we heard a kid say to his parents that "this is the scariest museum I've ever been to!"

We eventually headed towards all the monuments and meandered through them all, WWII, Korean, Lincoln, and Vietnam.

view down the reflecting pool (above) from the spot where MLK spoke (below)

Reflection on the Vietnam memorial, dusk

Pretending to look cheery and non-sweaty in front of Mr. Lincoln (you can see his feet)

We had two great meals yesterday - brunch at The Tabard Inn, which was well worth the long wait. Best brunch I've had in a long time, right next door to our hotel (!), and recommended to me by a very nice woman I met on the train in from NYC. Excellent! Then, on the other end of the spectrum, Lo and I had dinner at a place called Moby Dick's House of Kabob. Sort of a hole in the wall, despite it's various locations and website, very authentic, and super delicious. We walked slowly home down M St., in the still-hot night, along the old brick sidewalks with dry lightning flashing in the dark skies above us. Last nights of vacation are always bittersweet.

The Last Few Days

We were happily joined by Loretta two days ago, and headed out to see some D.C. sights. Right off the subway at the Mall, we saw a farmers' market, but not just any farmers' market:


We looked at the sparse offerings wilting in the midday heat and headed on to the National Gallery of Art. After some of the recent museums we've seen, it was a little bit underwhelming, but there were certainly some highlights. A few things by this guy:


A lovely woman smelling a rose in a courtyard:


and a few other things I really liked seeing, especially and surprisingly a few Vermeers. Have I ever mentioned that I heart Vermeer? Anyway, I do, and I was glad to see this:


We traipsed around a bit more, (as much as one can traipse in weather that feels more like wading through pea soup than walking), and finished our day with pizza, cold beer, and a few games of pool at a local dive-y bar. (We were going to catch an evening of jazz back at the Mall or a classical concert in Rock Creek Park, but we couldn't get it together to make it to either in time, whereas pool at the bar had no set start time, you see how it is...)

Yesterday the big and only thing on the agenda was the United States Holocaust Museum, basically the whole reason I wanted to come to Washington D.C. on this trip. I've been thinking about what I want to say about it since we left. It is simply the most well thought-out museum/memorial experience I have ever, ever seen. Rather than explain more about it, here are a few things that have stuck in my mind.

* The shoes. We've all seen pictures of the piles of shoes left by gas chamber victims. But seeing even a smallish pile of those old, dusty leather shoes was moving even when I knew it was coming.

* The Tower of Faces. You start at the museum's 4th floor and descend slowly back to the ground. Up on one of the higher floors, you go through a walkway that has hundreds of photos from a shtetl, a Jewish settlement in Lithuania, taken by amateur photographers that lived there. Serious wedding day portraits are intermingled with laughing groups of friends on holiday - one photograph of a young family shows mom with baby, dad holding a teddy bear, and you can even see grandma's hand in the frame shaking a toy at the little one to get him to smile. The first time you go through the photos you just learn about the settlement and look at as many as you can see. Two floors down you walk through again, and learn that a mobile SS death sqaud shot and killed all of them in the course of two days. 900 years of continuous Jewish settlement in that town, and in two days in September, 1941, all dead. No Jews now live in that town.

*The voices. One of the things that the museum does best is constantly move from macro to micro. Just when you're on information overload and you start to wonder how anyone might actually have lived through this or that particular horror, you come upon an exhibit of survivor's voices, or a theater where you can see people telling small stories of their experience. I will close with one small story...an older woman begins, talking about the first few minutes at camp. The shouting, the bewilderment...and one SS woman guard in particular, barking at them like a bulldog, she'd never heard a human voice that could sound like that. Then, the survivor pauses, and starts talking about how decent, kind, and good that SS woman was, that over the next months at camp she became her savior. It's an astonishing thing to listen to, the complete change in her voice as she talks. She describes one day when a higher-up SS man came to inspect their camp, and she was sick in her bunk with two other girls. This SS woman came, forced her to get up, tied their shoes and set them at their workstations, telling them to "get themselves together - today, it's a matter of life or death." The survivor closes her story by saying that this woman's example "pins a lie to the lips of anyone else who says that they had no choice".

Welcome to The Topaz

We've arrived in D.C. and can't quite believe this room!

The Park

There comes a point in a vacation like this where time catches up with you...the heat, the pace, the relentless feeling that there's always more to see and do, and you're missing out if you spend an afternoon taking a nap in your very expensive hotel room. Anyway, I reached that point yesterday. I was ready for a slow down today, and wanted to enjoy The Library Hotel...so we did. I did wake up and head a few blocks down to Bryant Park for an early morning "quiet" moment...although it was permeated by the sounds of an enthusiastic calisthenics group, rushing commuters, jackhammering being done on the N.Y. Public Library right nearby, and the usual city traffic sounds. But then...leisurely breakfast at the hotel, a quiet morning in the room, and a lovely quiet afternoon in a park. Central Park, of course....

First, some free M&M ice cream treats they were giving out at the entrance:

Next, a stroll past the Sheep's Meadow. The sheep were looking tan and oily...

We rambled through The Ramble, and found Narnia...if only it was snowing and we'd come through a wardrobe, I'd know just what was going to happen next...

Next, a little castle overlooking The Great Lawn, with the following list of rules, including a helpful suggestion:
We stopped, read, and napped in the strength-sapping heat, and then slowly trudged back to the subway. We saw this very well-mannered guy on the way:

One last stop at Strawberry Fields, right near John Lennon's home, where a kind of crazy guy arranges these flowers each day, calls himself "The Mayor of Strawberry Fields", and gives speeches to the tourist hordes:

Then, our last subway ride, a stressful taxi in rush hour traffic to Penn Station, and the train to D.C.!