May 31, 2007
Adrienne and I returned from a week of touristy fun in NYC and DC. Sadly, I can't report that I bumped into Ann Coulter at the urinals in a DC men's room and gave her a much-deserved swirly. But the trip was a lot of fun, with only a few misadventures.
Adrienne was a little gimpy from a sprain, but she soldiered on and kept up with my manic, robotic speedwalking. We were both awestruck by the scale and grandeur of Manhattan. As a cinemaphile and comic book huffer, it was amazing to see the neighborhoods and haunts of my childhood idols such as Spiderman and Travis Bickle. At nearly every street corner I expected to look up and see Aunt May sewing in an apartment window or Doctor Strange summoning the hoary hosts of Hoggoth in his Sanctum Sanctorum. Landmarks such as the Empire State Building, NY Public Library and Metropolitan Museum lived up to their billing. I was bummed that the exterior of the Guggenheim was enshrouded in scaffolding for a restoration, but photos don't do justice to its amazing interior. Central Park was spectacular, especially on Sunday when the sun broke out.
By the fourth day we were burning out a bit, so it was just as well that we were getting a change of scenery by heading out to DC. After negotiating the hair-raising NYC morning rush hour traffic and Jersey turnpike tolls in our rental car, we arrived in DC at noon Monday. A great first day of monuments and memorials was rudely interrupted by the horror of walking out of the National Archives after ogling the Declaration of Independance and Constitution to find that our car had been towed. I learned the hard way that many of the streets in DC become extremely unforgiving "Do Not MutherF'in Park" zones at the dot at 4 pm. We had to cab to the very, very bad side of town to a scary impound lot to retrieve our car. Even our cabbie was uncomfortable in the neighborhood, shouting out to the wifebeater-wearing gatekeeper to make sure he had gotten us to the correct destination and wasn't abandoning us to our doom. After only a slightly tramatizing interrogation in a run-down trailer by the cast of the "Gimp" scene in Pulp Fiction, we were back on our way, with my first DC souvenir - a $100 parking ticket.
We stuck to the traditional touristy stuff in DC, although after our very lengthy tour of museums in NY, we were a bit tired of artwork and artifacts - so we concentrated mainly on outdoor sites such as Arlington Cemetery, capital buildings, and sculpture parks. We also took a Duck tour of DC, which wasn't nearly as cool as the one we took in Boston last summer, but was still fun. Much to my chagrin, on our last day we found out that you could take a tour of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to see real money getting printed, which sounded awesome. But sadly we didn't have enough time left for that.
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