April 2022 ...
This blog was supposed to be all about travel and the lessons that it teaches us. Or me, rather. I have fallen by the wayside with that goal, in the past few years, because of one thing or another that has delayed trips and made them smaller, closer, and less frequent.
But trips have happened and I need to catch up. Maybe the blogs I am about to post are not as thorough and long as others in the past, but I hope they will serve as inspiration for you all to pack and hit the road, if you can and if some of these places are handy, or as a reminder for me that the past year or so has not been completely empty of adventure.
This one is about a trip to Washington, DC that we took on Easter weekend (around April 17th, 2022). It was also the weekend of our 12th anniversary.
We have both been to the American capital several times before. But every time you go, the city offers the same familiarity and comfort of a small city, really, and it’s fresh with a new vibe. Whether it’s a new presidency at the White House, or just a different season, the city feels old and new and fresh at the same time.
Although it feels much like a historic, cozy Southern town at times, it has the same thump as a big metropolis (think New York and the likes) - busy traffic and ambulance and police sirens. It even smells like a big town, human urine and throw-up included.
We didn’t want to drive during our stay there. We booked a hotel just about 5 blocks off from the National Mall and we wanted to walk everywhere - to the Capitol, to museums, to restaurants.
The highlights of this trip included:
A walk-about The Capitol building - still surrounded by scaffolding and awaiting renovation after the January 6th, 2021 insurrection. It was a sad, daunting sight - a dark spot in our recent history to be sure. “Not in America”, some said. Yes, in America, the facts beg to differ.
The reflecting pool was emptied out of water and it added to the gloomy vibe. Although the National Mall was resounding with music and crowds (Easter weekend is not a slow weekend for DC, we found out), it felt gutted and unfriendly.
A walk in the US Botanic Gardens right off The Mall was relaxing and refreshing, a spot of peace away from the exhausting party-like life of crowds beyond: the famous Washington cherry blossoms were on their way out that weekend, but some still around, and flanked by dogwoods and rising proud over blankets of multi-colored tulips.
The US Botanic Gardens
The highlight of the trip was probably the visit to The Museum of the Bible - a new one to us and I don’t think it’s an old one for the city either. What better place to be around Easter?! (We realized quite fast that other ten thousand other Christians had the very same thought that day!)
It is a very well-done museum, following the history of the Bible through many traditions and across cultures from all over the world. It houses what seems to be hundreds of thousands of Bible versions in that many languages and dialects - some languages that you had never heard of before. It’s a museum of the printing press, and of languages as much as it is a museum of this one book and the faiths that it sprung into the world.
At that time, it also housed a replica of the Shroud of Turin - a length of linen cloth bearing the negative image of a man and believed to be the fabric in which Jesus was wrapped after the crucifixion. Much research has been done to estimate its age. All of the research points to a time around the Middle Ages, maybe around as early as 1200s. But why people place it as belonging to someone roughly 1200 years before that date was unclear to me. However, reading about the effect it has had on so many generations, and reading about its history and how it was passed on from generation to generation, a sacred symbol of faith and hope is still remarkable.
The Shroud of Turin
For our anniversary dinner, we went to The Dubliner which was right around the corner from our hotel. We were supposed to be in Ireland (among other places in a tour) for our 10th anniversary, but Covid got in the way in 2020. So The Dubliner was an appropriate “consolation prize” two years after the “real” trip would have happened. The Dubliner was remarkable for two reasons, for me: they had the best home-made salmon pastrami Reuben sandwich I have ever had! I didn’t even know that salmon pastrami existed. And they carried my favorite beer in the whole world on draft - the Kilkenny cream ale. If you only knew how hard it is to get this beer on draft (or at all, really) in America, you’d understand what a momentous occasion this was.
Salmon pastrami reuben sandwich and mashed potatoes at The Dubliner
We started our first day in DC by paying our respects to a new (to us) (small) memorial erected in honor of victims of communism. Although small and off-the-beaten-path, it bore an enormous amount of significance for me. It’s one of those memorials that makes my heart stop and skip a few beats when I think of all the faces that fell for nothing more than a belief. Puts things, still, into great perspective today, and it’s still a raw and alive part of who I am. Of who I will always be.
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