Saturday, June 10, 2006

Washington, DC: April 2006

Cherry Blossom Festival, near the Jefferson Memorial, Washington, DC

As we wandered around we recalled that early in the Clinton Administration that Bill would often go out for an early morning run on the Mall. Apparently the routine often included the “run-up” window for takeout at McDonald’s. We were pleased to have no sightings of the current administration.


Cherry Blossom Festival, near the public services, Washington, DC

It was sure crowded at the Cherry Blossom Festival – but, nowhere more so than in the line for the port-a-johns. The line was so long that it was not immediately obvious from a couple hundred yards back that the blocked sidewalk was actually the waiting line. A “queue” as the British say.



Burst of color at the IRS, Washington, DC

The tulips were also in full bloom; we spotted these beauties in front of the IRS building. The façade of the building has a wonderful quote etched prominently in the stone, it says

“Taxes are what we pay for a civilized society.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes




At the Lincoln Memorial, Washington, DC

Birding can be exciting – apparently even shocking.


One last image on the Mall, Washington, DC


Some to the other highlights (and a lowlight) of the trip included:

Imagine the surprise of randomly running into Jeff at the National Building Museum. He’s a friend and colleague from my department at Umass – Amherst; we’re in the same research group in human geography. Both of us had tagged along to the city with our spouses who were attending (different) conferences in DC that weekend. It made a great excuse for heading straight over to the brew pub in Chinatown for refreshments.

I was also able to secure an interview with architect Bruno Freschi during our visit. He’s retired from his faculty position at Syracuse University and now lives in DC. Probably best known for his work on the Vancouver World Expo Center, he was also involved in the “Peace Bridge” at Buffalo, NY: it links the U.S.A. with Canada. The focus of the interview, however, was to find out more about Freschi’s work in the 1990’s on promoting the construction of a bridge across the Strait of Gibraltar to connect Europe with Africa. The proposed bridge was to have its southern terminus near Tangier, Morocco, my primary research site. For a variety of reasons, but perhaps primarily because of lower cost, a tunnel is instead currently being constructed.

A friend met us for dinner at an excellent Chinese restaurant: Charlie Cheung Restaurant, 660 South Pickett Street, Alexandria, VA (703-851-8888 ). It's across the river to the south of the city in Virginia. We took the metro down to the restaurant. Their specialty is sichuan (spicy) food: yum!

And finally, I got stuck overnight at BWI when my flight was cancelled due to a plane malfunction. After hours of waiting and wondering it was determined that the plane would probably just go early the following morning so I decided to just take the $150 voucher towards a future flight on United rather than try to track down a hotel. So I slept on a couch I found near the new international terminal. It wasn’t bad until around 4am when a baby woke up and spent the next hour screaming. It was surprising how many people were sleeping in the terminal; not just people from my flight. In particular, there were a couple hundred soldiers, with mountains of green duffels, who were lined up in neat rows sleeping on the floor on the lower level.




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