Having just returned from a combination business/pleasure trip to Washington, DC, leaves me behind and trying to catch up. I also didn’t avail myself of internet access for reasons noted below, so here’s a collection of random thoughts from the trip:
- Why is it the hotels in larger cities that charge you a couple hundred bucks a night for a room also want to charge $10 or more a day for internet access in your room and more than that for wireless access in meeting rooms? Hell, the Holiday Inn or Country Inn & Suites give you free wireless access in your room and in the common areas.
- A realizing my age moment: the young teen girl standing near us during the opening video at the Holocaust Memorial Museum (showing the discovery of the death camps by Allied solders) asking the leader of her group, “Is this real?”
- The pot or the kettle: the Jewish woman leading a group of middle school-aged Jewish children through the museum who told them Palestinians just copy Nazi propaganda to create hate for Jews.
- The Air & Space Museum never loses its appeal. It wasn’t on our list and I just intended to run in to look in the museum shop. My youngest daughter decided to tag along. Looking inside John Glenn’s Mercury capsule and seeing The Spirit of St. Louis above her was enough to send us back out to tell mom and sister to come in because she decided it was worth going through after all.
- The downside: the sampling of items from the Museum of American History at the Air & Space Museum that reminded us the former is closed until next year for renovation.
- New spot in DC that is near the top of the must sees: the American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery within.
- Certainly a sign of political (mis)fortunes: many of the souvenir shops we saw had as much, if not more, anti-Bush material than favorable items.
Better bring your own redemption when you come
“The Barricades of Heaven,” Jackson Browne, Looking East
