Washington DC, Part 2

1, 2 September 2013

Fortunately there is Latin Mass in the heart of Washington DC at St. Mary Mother of God Church. We came on the subway Sunday morning and then walked from there to do more touring.

• National Gallery of Art, East and West Buildings   Take me back here—I need more time! Delightful, and they let you take pictures! The modern half of the National Gallery (East building) was disappointing, however. I did enjoy seeing gigantic portraits by Chuck Close. Chuck has Facial Recognition Disorder (Prosopagnosia) so he divides his source photo into squares and paints enormous portraits one square at a time.

• Museum of Air and Space   My feet and legs ached so much from all the previous day's walking that all I could really do was sit and rest. Whistling Son joined me while Great Husband and Tall Son enjoyed the museum.

National Museum of Air and Space

Supper was from one of the many food trucks that serve the National Mall. We had Greek food, did people-watching on the Mall, and then went to a great Labor Day symphony concert on the West Lawn of the Capitol. It was the National Symphony joined by three string musicians called Time for Three.

The Capitol seen from the West Lawn at concert time

After the concert, Great Husband realized he had lost his glasses out of his shirt pocket. We returned to the West Lawn in total darkness and got the assistance of the Capitol Police with their flashlights in searching for the glasses, but without any luck. The rest of the story happened the next morning.

First thing on Monday we returned to the West Lawn and got permission to do more searching for the glasses. The four us formed a search party at arms length from each other so that we could cover the ground in an organized fashion. It looked like the grass had been freshly mown, so were we ever surprised to successfully find those glasses! They looked terrible! One lens was popped out of the frames and mashed into the dirt. The ear pieces were splayed out, and overall the glasses really looked beyond hope. But once back at the camper at the end of the day, Great Husband was able to bend them back into shape and we all rejoiced that they were wearable!

Monday's activities:

• Tour of the Capitol Building   This tour starts by entering the visitors' center under the plaza on the east side of the Capitol. It is a very nice visitor's center but it would have been nicer to be able to enter by climbing the original steps, thus getting oriented to the layout of the building by relating it to the outside. For the tour we were given headsets so we could hear the guide easily. Unfortunately we did not get to see either the House chamber or the Senate chamber since they were not in session. 

• Tour of the Library of Congress     This building is stunning inside! (Admittedly, all the decor is devoted to the secular.) I thought the impact of entering the Library of Congress was much greater than the impact of the Capitol Rotunda. We took a great tour and got to see the Gutenburg Bible and the hand-made Giant Bible of Mainz, the big reading room where the public can request materials to study, and the Thomas Jefferson library, moved here from Monticello. 

• We walked to Union Station and took the Metro to the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception    This is just an enormous place, with many niches and sculptures devoted to Mary, but mostly too edgy to satisfy me.

Plaza on the east side of the Capitol

Every inch of the Library of Congress is decorated.

Reading room in the Library of Congress

A small portion of a triptych -- I liked these ladies at the
National Gallery of Art

from the National Gallery of Art

Washington DC, Part 1

31 August 2013

Sometimes we rely just too much on our GPS to lead us into new locales. On our drive into Washington, DC, after dark, it chose to bring us right through the heart of DC. Disadvantage: a maze of streets and tons of traffic encountered at night while towing the camper. Advantage: Seeing the Jefferson Memorial lighted at night.

Recommended campground which worked great for us: Cherry Hill Campground in College Park, Maryland. Well run, very nice facilities, computers available for your use when Great Husband’s laptop goes kaput, friendly staff, late check-in by staff in a kiosk. Can’t say enough good things about this place, especially considering it is in the city. From Cherry Hill, we drove a very short distance to the College Park Metro Stop, parked the car for free (on weekends and Labor Day) and rode the Metro into National Mall area. We were able to buy our basic Metro Passes at Cherry Hill and then add value onto them at the Metro Station, using credit cards. Cost was about $64 a night for 4 adults, including AAA discount.

As for the Metro, we had been told in advance how nice it was, but we thought it was well-worn and the stations could never have been considered attractive. Signage is not adequate, and on weekends they were doing various repairs that meant certain stations were closed down. All this was a little difficult to figure out. Free shuttle buses were provided to fill in the gaps in service, which was nice. Even with four sets of ears, we typically couldn’t understand a word of the announcements that were made on the Metro cars. If you work for the Metro, even if you’ve made the same announcement a zillion times, you need to speak clearly for the sake of the rest of us. Otherwise, the Metro is a great system for moving vast crowds of people around the city.

Highlights of DC, Day 1:

• Ford’s Theater, where Abraham Lincoln was shot, and Peterson House, where he died
• White House and protestors outside, whom we watched while eating our lunch in Lafayette Park. The protest was against Obama’s planned attack into Syria. We could see the White House well from the north side but they've got us regular citizens blocked from getting anywhere near it on the south side. And of course, Obama is trying to punish the American people during the sequester by closing all tours inside the White House. So petty.
• Walking tour of the monuments, which I’d guess might have been about ten miles all considered. I wish one of us had been wearing a pedometer. Reviews of the hop-on hop-off trolleys spooked me with stories of overcrowding and long wait times, which is why we chose to walk. I really expected the Mall area to be clean and well-manicured, but it is certainly not. Trash bins were full and overflowing and trash was blowing around liberally. I would like to say our nation had put forward a better image here. The place was teeming with foreigners.
• World War II Memorial, Lincoln Memorial, Vietnam Memorial, Korean War Memorial, FDR Memorial, Thomas Jefferson Memorial   Saw the name of a relative on my mom's side on the Vietnam Memorial, which led to an interesting reminiscence by Great Husband about those days when he and the rest of the draft-able young men lived on edge. 

  

  Lincoln box inside Ford's Theater

  
  

  

  Inside the Petersen house, the bedroom where Lincoln died--
  this is across the street from the Ford Theater.

  
  

  

  The People's House?????

  
  

  

  Protestors on the north side of the White House

  
  

  

  World War II Memorial

  
  

  

  Lincoln Memorial

  
  

  

  Korean War Memorial

  
  

  

  Jefferson Memorial across the Tidal Basin

  
  

  

  Jefferson Memorial

Williamsburg, VA area, Part 4

28, 29, 30 August 2013

Tall Son joined us at Colonial Williamsburg Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. We tried to cram a lot into every day and I became convinced that Tall Son is bitten by the same touring bug that afflicts Great Husband. Gotta see it all!

Early on Wednesday we went to see Martha Washington at the St. George Tucker house, and she was absolutely fabulous! We cannot imagine a better rendition of Martha or a more knowledgeable person portraying her!

Lee Ann Rose portrays Martha Custis Washington

We also had tickets to see a delightful concert performed entirely on glass instruments – the glass armonica invented by Ben Franklin (no, we didn’t go insane), glass bells, a glass violin, and another instrument/sculpture made of glass and other materials by two very elderly brothers in France. The musician taught us about each of the instruments and his performance was “simulcast” on a screen above the stage so his hands and the instruments could be seen. We were amazed that he could play that full scale of glass bells without accidentally clanking them together and shattering them!

Glass armonica

We were anxious to play RevQuest that same day, a game developed by Whistling Son and other Colonial Williamsburg staff, this year titled “The Black Chambers.” RevQuest includes online portions and on-site portions, solving puzzles and ciphers, and talking to characters on the streets of the Revolutionary City to gather the information needed to aid the Revolutionary cause. We began by thinking we could simultaneously tour Colonial Williamsburg while solving the challenges of RevQuest, but after a while we realized that RevQuest would require our focused attention, and we were just barely able to solve it by the end of the day. The game was incredibly fun and plenty challenging. We encountered other families who were taking it quite seriously, including a husband who said of his wife, “She’s obsessed with it!” When the plot of Revquest took an unexpected twist, and a large group of us suddenly encountered the enemy—British redcoats--we thought we had failed in our mission. A little girl was so upset, perhaps thinking this was all real, that she started to cry!

Bravo to Whistling Son for his efforts on RevQuest! We look forward to playing the new version in 2014.

Thursday highlights in Colonial Williamsburg:

• Period music at the Raleigh Tavern—harpsichord, violin, and viola di gamba
• Order in the Court at the Courthouse—audience members volunteer to play the roles of the accused and the magistrates. The woman who was accused of “singing bawdy songs uncomplimentary to the king” had Great Husband and me in stitches! She had such an indescribably hilarious voice that if she is not soon hired as cartoon voice talent, she is missing her true vocation!
• Tour of the capitol building and gaol (pronounced jail, but the letter “j” did not exist back then)

Here are tourists being trained to join the revolutionary forces!
It was hilarious -- they had trouble obeying orders,
including much mixing up of right and left, and failure to keep
up with the proper rhythm. Sticks were used as rifles.

Friday highlights in Colonial Williamsburg:

• Small group chat with Thomas Jefferson at the St. George Tucker House
• Display of spinets and harpsichords at the Dewitt Wallace Museum
• Speech by the Marquis de Lafayette at Dewitt Wallace
• Tour of the Governor’s Palace presented by a “servant” in the palace, shortly after the British stole all the gunpowder from the Williamsburg magazine, and after Governor Dunmore and his family escaped into the night in fear of the colonists

Thomas Jefferson as portrayed
by Bill Barker

After he finished his work day, we picked up Whistling Son, toured his office and met his boss, Lisa. Then we headed for Washington DC.

Williamsburg, VA area, Part 3

27 August 2013

We headed to Virginia Beach on Tuesday, a significant drive to get our windshield repaired before the crack could spread. Why go so far? We found this place called Jody’s Windshield Repair on the internet, and Jody’s specialty is repairing significant cracks (up to five feet long!) in lieu of doing replacements. We ended up having so much fun at Jody’s that a mundane task became a good time! 

Jody and her husband Dale repair windshields out of their home. Imagine pulling into a stranger’s driveway. Good-natured Dale greets you and invites you to pull into his carpeted garage, complete with bar stools and big-screen TV. Dale got right down to business on our “coke bottle” crack, and soon Jody appeared as well. She whipped out her I-pad and launched into showing us various websites on oddball topics of interest to her, followed by photos of complex windshield repairs she had accomplished.

On the driveway sat Jody’s golfcart, not used for golf, but for cruising the neighborhood. The golf cart was decorated with colored circular stickers, and somehow I was reminded of the Dating Game décor. While Jody regaled Great Husband with more I-pad stuff, Dale told me about their little dog, named Lucki. Lucki was found on their doorstep during a difficult emotional time for Jody, and having Lucki join the family was able to bring Jody out of her depression.

Soon Jody jumped up and said, “Look at this!” She hopped into the golf cart and Lucki jumped into her lap. They headed off down the street. When they came back Lucki was driving the cart! And we got all this entertainment plus a windshield repair for only $75.

Jody and Lucki

In the afternoon we went to the Nauticus (maritime museum) and Battleship Wisconsin, and took a 2-3 hour harbor cruise (Victory Rover Naval Base Cruises) on the Elizabeth River. Out here, rivers are not like rivers back home. Our rivers flow one direction, narrow and fast. Our here, they are miles wide and flow indistinguishably from one body of water into another. I’ll let Great Husband give you his impressions of this afternoon:

“There was far more to see at Nauticus than time allowed. Exhibits covered a wide range from ocean creatures to navy warships to merchant shipping. Some of the most interesting exhibits deal with container ships, appropriate since Hampton Roads is a major port for these ships. The highlight was the self-guided tour of the Battleship Wisconsin. Many spaces below decks are open, and the ship has been nicely restored, complete with teak deck. Our river cruise took us past Historic Portsmouth and the U.S. Navy base. We were fortunate to see the aircraft carrier Eisenhower, which was in port at the time.”

On deck of the Battleship Wisconsin

We enjoyed learning about container ships.

Inside the Wisconsin

Officer's dining hall inside the Wisconsin

We ended the day by picking up Tall Son from the airport in Richmond so he could vacation with us and Whistling Son. It was quite a day!

Williamsburg, VA area, Part 2

26 August 2013

While Whistling Son was at work, Great Husband and I spent our Monday at Colonial Williamsburg. We never tire of it. I’ve probably written that before. As a side benefit of donating to the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, we get to attend special events in the St. George Tucker house. (St. George is Mr. Tucker’s rather unusual first name.) These events are small-group meetings with famous people who were in Williamsburg during the Revolutionary period. 

St. George Tucker House in Colonial Williamsburg

Monday’s famous person was the Marquis de Lafayette, as portrayed by Mark Schneider, and what a dynamo he is! Mark is an American whose mother is French, so he is fluent in the language and to us his English with a French accent certainly sounds authentic. Great Husband has also noticed that Mark uses excellent French mannerisms. For part of each program at the St. George Tucker house, the actor speaks in the historic time period only. After that, he or she exits the character and speaks as him or herself, answering any questions that the small audience wishes to ask. We always find that the audience is very knowledgeable and asks excellent questions, and the actors are amazing in their expertise on every particular about their characters. The actress who portrays Martha Washington could even tell us where Martha purchased the bourbon for her Christmas cake!

The dynamic Marquis, as portrayed by the dynamic Mark Schneider

As annual pass holders, we also qualify for various tours behind the scenes. Several times we have taken the special tour that starts at the former Bruton Heights School and moves on to the  conservation center where preservation and restoration of all sorts of artifacts are done. Once again we toured the paper conservation studio and then we got to see the workshop where the antique furniture is cared for. It is important that whatever is done to the furniture be reversible, so this group has developed very specialized techniques, including a method to reupholster furniture without adding any additional nail holes. The man who heads this department started as a maintenance man at Colonial Williamsburg some 45 years ago, and when he saw historic furniture and bolts of upholstery fabric being thoughtlessly discarded, he got this group started to preserve such things. He is old enough that he would like to retire but there is no one with his expertise to replace him, so he has written a book to pass along his knowledge.

Historic furniture being conserved in the upholstery shop

Williamsburg, VA area, Part 1

23, 24, 25 August 2013

It was time to visit Whistling Son once again! We arrived in the rain at the Williamsburg KOA on Friday night and the site was muddy, which made us doubly thankful to set up quickly and settle in so much easier than in the pop-up days.

When we visit, Whistling Son doesn’t like to spend his time with us at Colonial Williamsburg, since he works there every day, so we spent an easy Saturday with him, taking a beautiful drive to Berkeley Plantation, family home of several generations of famous Harrisons, as in President Benjamin Harrison and President William Henry Harrison (aka Tippecanoe). A neighboring plantation, which we didn’t get to visit, was the home of President John Tyler. Thus, when you hear of “Tippecanoe and Tyler, too”, you can picture them not only as running mates but as their families being neighbors. A cannonball from the Civil War is lodged in the upper story brick wall of one of the plantation buildings. But don’t be too impressed. That cannon ball was actually found somewhere on the ground and deliberately mounted there in the wall to show it off.

Main house at Berkeley Plantation

Adjacent house with cannon ball in the wall

Here's the fraudulently-mounted cannon ball.

Back yard at Berkeley Plantation -- nice!

Sunday Whistling Son drove us all to Mass in Chesapeake at St. Benedict’s (FSSP). It takes about an hour and a half to get there, and the return drive can land you in a traffic jam even on a Sunday. In the late afternoon we went to Yorktown and enjoyed hearing the Yorktown Fife and Drum Corps and walking among the Revolutionary War cannons.  

Yorktown Fife and Drum Corps

Afterwards we went to hear a performance by a musical group called Poisoned Dwarf, advertised as being held in the church yard of the Episcopal Church. It was quite a surprise to see that the church yard was actually a cemetery and that the audience was settled in among the graves with their picnic suppers and bag chairs. Inappropriate? Great Husband saw to it that our chosen seating spot was not amidst the headstones, but off to the side. The music was fantastic! The guys played a wide variety of instruments, and toward the end of the concert a young lady jumped up and did some very skillful dancing in the style of Riverdance. It couldn’t have been easy, dancing in her socks on the grass!

At the same event, Great Husband met a car guy named Steve, who has owned many MGs. Not only has Steve owned MGs, but he has had over 300 cars in 30-some years. He was quite the character.

Poisoned Dwarf

Graveyard seating

Biltmore Estate, Asheville, NC

23 August 2013

We had a fabulous time touring the Biltmore Estate here in Asheville. It is definitely important to devote a whole day to seeing this impressive place. Biltmore was built by George Vanderbilt, youngest son of the third generation of wealthy Vanderbilts. The house, in French chateau style, was completed in 1895 when George was 32 and still single. It has 101 bedrooms, 43 bathrooms, and 4 acres of space under its roof. Imagine that much house for one single guy. He did marry not long after (how could such an eligible bachelor escape for long?), but he and his wife only had one child, a daughter named Cornelia, born in 1900, and George died suddenly at age 51 when she was not quite 14.

The property includes vast gardens, and we walked them first. Then we took a multi-hour walk of the house, using rented audio players that give great information about the house, the furnishings, the art and tapestries, and the people who lived there and visited there. The audio players are well worth the extra $10 it costs to use them. The house is absolutely amazing, and it’s the best house tour we have ever had. One of the wonderful things about touring here is that you are completely able to move at your own pace and you never feel hounded. Most rooms are monitored by friendly and knowledgeable hosts, there to answer any questions you have. The estate has 1800 employees to keep this whole operation going.

One cute story on the audio player was told by a preservationist who works at Biltmore. He had completed a restoration of George Biltmore’s bedroom, which involved new gold leaf on the walls and across a door to George’s private closet. With the new gold leaf, the closet door would not close properly, and in an attempt to close it, the preservationist went inside the closet and pushed the door shut from that side. It was then that he discovered that there was no doorknob on the inside. He called out for a long time, hoping one of the tourists strolling through the bedroom would hear him and get him out, but the closet was too soundproof and everyone passed by. Finally a little child heard his cries for help and with difficulty convinced his mother that someone was trapped in the closet. As the preservationist was finally released from the closet, the gathered tourists applauded. Now that closet door is left permanently ajar.

Descendants of George Biltmore own the property still, and continue to work on preserving the house and making it available to the public. If we ever get a chance to return, we would enjoy touring Biltmore again and taking one of the specialized tours, such as the Butler’s Tour or the Architect’s Tour, which cover other rooms and additional information from behind the scenes.

Right now we’re on the road toward Williamsburg, Virginia. We took a couple of damaging hits to the Flex’s windshield once again, and hope that it will be repairable without replacing the whole thing, which cost $500 last time around. My theory is that because we are travelling at 60 mph, we are sitting ducks to the many semis who pull around us and kick rocks at us.