Jet lag: not conquered, but on its way out. Slept until 06:30 this morning which I reckoned was good going. Breakfast isn’t included on our tariff so we headed out to find a diner for breakfast. It turns out that this area is more of an evening venue and it took us a while to find somewhere that was open, but we got a good breakfast in after a good walk.
The question then was: what to do now? Having both been here before neither of us had much in the way of ‘must do’ things, so we took a walk down 16th Street to the White House to see if they’d relaxed the security enough to start letting tours in again. (Several bits of the hotel literature mentioned them, but they hadn’t been available the last time I was here in 2002.) It turns out that nothing had changed. You could take photographs from the end of the North or South Lawns, but that was the closest you got – and you had to weave your way between security men and concrete crash barriers along the road-side. We went on to visitors centre on the next block, but mainly to use the toilets.
After that we strolled along Pennsylvania Avenue down towards The Mall to visit the Museum of American History. Strangely the first exhibit we saw was the one about the Presidency and it was much more interesting than the White House Visitors Centre had been.
Lunch was at the Old Post Office where, because it’s still a Federal Building, you have to go through the bizarre ritual of getting your bag checked and walking through the metal detector just to get into the food court.
Brett remarked that Washington seemed to be a city under siege and, as the day wore on, I had to agree with him. While you are photographing the White House (and you are always a good few hundred yards from the actual building) the tourists are under very obvious constant observation by a couple of police men across the road. The road to the north of the building is closed for ‘major re-engineering.’ No traffic is allowed along the road by the South Lawn, which is lined with concrete crash-barriers (on both sides!) and where access is controlled by a hydraulic ramp/barrier device. Similar devices adorn vehicle entrances at any building involved with government (such as the National Archive) and metal detectors and bag searches are routine in every public building even remotely connected with government (such as the White House visitors centre.)
It strikes me that if this is the result of September 11th 2001, then the terrorists have already won a battle in the ‘War On Terrorism.’ Such intense, paranoiac security measures make one feel insecure, which is surely the goal of terrorism; to change national policy by playing on the fears of the population. The policeman scrutinising the tourists outside the White House isn’t going to spot a terrorist about his business unless he’s a very stupid terrorist, so why is he there? Do Americans feel safer for having that policeman there? Do they feel his role there is useful in fighting terrorism? I must ask some of them.
Anyway, we spent the afternoon mostly in the National Gallery enjoying sculpture and French and Flemish masters. I was actually hoping that there would be copies of some of the sculpture for sale in the very large shop, but it turned out that unless you wanted to buy a copy, a print, a postcard, or a place-mat of one of about ten well known paintings the shop was not for you.
We gave up on art and went shopping.
Back along Pennsylvania avenue to the Metro station where we headed to the Metro Centre. In the end, the shopping came to naught as well. I was looking for a card-reader for my camera as I’ve managed to leave mine at home and have no way of uploading or backing up my photographs. I’m also thinking that some comfortable walking sandals would be good. No joy on either account, so we headed back to Dupont Circle to drink coffee and watch the world go by.
Back at the hotel now – which, just to clarify, does not have leopard skin carpets in the actual bedrooms. They are just in the corridors, as are the red walls. Our room is decorated in a not-quite-mustard yellowy brown, with a dark burgundy red, geometrically patterned carpet. The lampshades and bed-heads are very tall and red however and we have red velvet curtains and all of the usual hotel room paraphernalia has some kind of red highlight to it.
We’re having dinner with the Chorus boys this evening, most of whom have been arriving this afternoon. We’re expecting the first concert (on Thursday) to be well attended as there are posters all over the gay district. The concert is a joint one featuring ourselves as the guests of the Gay Men’s Chorus Of Washington, along with the Heartland Men’s Chorus, from Kansas, with whom we’ve sung before. However the picture on the poster if of us, the LGMC, so we were feeling very proud when we saw them up everywhere.
No comments:
Post a Comment