Once Upon A Time In The District

It was a great trip to the District, Washington, D.C. We did not see the Smithsonian, Jefferson Memorial, White House, the Wall, or many more attractions. But, then, after all, that was not the purpose for our trip. We had a nice drive from Goose Creek, SC, to Fairfax, VA. Traffic wasn’t extremely heavy considering that we were on the east coast Armageddon of super highway travel, Interstate 95. We had spoken to the oldest son via cell phone and knew he was in route from New Jersey and the daughter from Georgia had called to say she was in a diner near the hotel. We checked in and were soon talking with the Arizona and California folks via telephone. Yes, the children were getting together with Mom. And I, well, I was Mom’s husband.


This trip was about family fun. When people are on both coasts it’s difficult to get them altogether. This trip had been in the planning stages for at least a year. We stayed at the same extended stay hotel except for the NJ contingent who stayed at Crystal City. We were only a mile from the Metro station, and that would be our major mode of transport around the area. I was surprised to find that all day parking was only $4.50. I think that was the only inexpensive thing we found there in the city.

It had been decided that we would go to Pizzeria Paradiso in Georgetown for dinner. We used our car to drive from Fairfax to Georgetown; the Acura was a bit roomier than the rental Chevy. We parked underneath a shopping mall and walked about a block back to the restaurant. We walked down two or three levels to the dining room where we were seated. The rest of our party met us there, and we had a table for ten. It was good to see everyone together for the first time in at least five years. I thought the food was a bit pricey, and service left a bit to be desired, but we enjoyed each other’s company. The sweet tooth crowd wanted to find a cupcake shop, and so our navigatrix found one close by using her cell phone. The line was out onto the sidewalk, and waiting is not my finest suit. Everyone enjoyed their favorite exotic cupcake before returning to the hotel for a good night’s sleep.

We were up early the next day but the not rest of our party. We had breakfast burritos in our room. At the Metro station we bought our “one-day” passes, which are good for any time of day except rush hour. Washington’s Metro is clean and modern and bigger than London’s tube but, unfortunately, several of the escalators were out of service.

We rode to Union Station and had lunch at a nearby Irish pub. Lunch was good, and Mark and Nathan joined us for our tour of the Capitol. One of the attractive interns from Senator Jim DeMint’s office led our tour of the capitol building. There were quite a few tourists on a weekday but not overly crowded. It is very inspiring and big. I found out that if the Statue of Liberty is placed inside the capitol rotunda, it would not reach the top!

We next visited the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. This is a great place for aerophiles like me. This was my second visit, so I was able to guide some of the newer visitors in our party around. I always learn something new at this museum. For example, the Airbus A380 is controlled by a joystick rather than the traditional yoke. Although this is a great museum, I find the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center at Chantilly better. The museum closes at 5:30, which seemed very early to me, but we did have time to get a soft serve ice cream which was a great treat for a hot day. Then, it was back to the sidewalk.

The group split up a bit as Nathan and Mark went to get Jen and meet us for dinner. According to one of the brochures we had, the American Art Museum was open until 7 p.m., so away we went. The George Ault show of 1940’s American paintings was very good. There is a good exhibit of folk art as well. I have mixed emotions about folk art. Much of the modern folk art is called outsider art. “Outsider” refers to the fact that the artists have no formal training.

Dinner was at a Mexican restaurant near all the Hispanic embassies. The food was great, and service was good, but it was extremely noisy. Dining was upstairs and open air. I thought the heat would be unbearable, but the overhead fans did their job. The place got a bad mark in my book for the life size cutouts of the President and First Lady by the entrance. Some members of our party even had their pictures taken with them. They are family. I still speak with them! By this time it was getting late and time to catch the Metro back to Fairfax. We got back to our room and watched some of the College World Series, and Carolina won. Although my blood runs orange I support those South Carolina teams in national competition.

The next day we did lunch in Crystal City: a hamburger restaurant in a mall. The brilliant designers had a clear glass roof over the dining area. It’s no fun to try to enjoy your food under intense heat. It was my least enjoyable meal.

We thought it would be a good day for a walk to the Lincoln Memorial. After a Metro ride, we exited at the station near George Washington University and began our walk. It took us by the Department of State, but I didn’t see Hillary Clinton anywhere. Kim, our navigatrix, kept us on track on this very warm walk. There was quite a crowd at the Memorial. Lincoln in his big chair is quite impressive up close. We had a good view of the Washington Monument without the benefit of a reflecting pool. The pool was empty for whatever reason.

After our visit to the memorial, which included a lot of walking, we were ready for the tearoom Kim had found, the Teasim Restaurant Penn Quarter. We had the afternoon tea menu: a selection of sandwiches, scones, tartlets, and other goodies with a pot of tea. There were a lot of Asian teas and menu items, but we stuck with Earl Grey and the traditional menu. We ate downstairs after getting our food. (No wait service here.) It was kind of cozy and quiet enough to carry on a good conversation. We spent about two hours in this place before saying good-bye to the New Jersey part of the family. They would not be joining us for dinner at Jaleo.

Jaleo, a Spanish restaurant, was a super treat. We had a reservation for 5:30 for an early dinner, because we had theater tickets for a 7:30 play. We had a good table for the seven of us by the window and the food and service were first class. The menu for the tapas style meal was in Spanish with English translations. My travelmate and I were excited about the Spanish food, since we will be visiting Spain in the fall. The arroz de pato, croquetas de pollo, dátiles con tocino ‘como hace todo el mundo’, butifarra casera con mongetes were all delicious, especially the dates wrapped in bacon and deep fried. We shared a carafe of sangria with Kim. It was the first sangria I had ever had with white wine.

The play was William Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice at the Shakespeare Theater Company. The production was superb. This version was set in the early 20th century with period music. I found it quite interesting and the Shakespearaholic I’m married to was ecstatic. We watched the film version starring Al Pacino as Shylock before our visit to familiarize ourselves with the story. It was a late train we took back to Fairfax with the requisite homeless person sleeping on the train.

Morning came early and we decided we would have breakfast together before going our separate ways. There were only seven of us, since part of the family had left earlier in the day. It was a good breakfast at the diner, and we said our good-bys and planned to meet in Chicago in 2013.

Pizzaria Paradiso Teasim Restaurant Jaleo Other Picasa Photos from the trip.

I did not see Craig T. Nelson of The District anywhere.

Chateau de Versailles

Now I’ve seen some fancy houses; Hearst Castle in northern California with its indoor/outdoor swimming pool and North Carolina’s Biltmore House built by the Vanderbilts with its bowling alley in the basement. And I’ve seen some castles in the British Isles. But never have I seen anything to even come close to the opulence of Versailles in France, or more correctly, Chateau de Versailles.


We had bought the Paris Museum Pass online which included admission to Versailles as well as other attractions. An early train out of Paris had us in the village of Versailles within an hour. The palace is about a half mile walk from the train station. There is no problem finding it; you just follow the crowds. Much to my dismay, in the parking lot were dozens of tour busses. After all it was Sunday morning. It was the “wrong day” to visit. It’s just impossible to schedule to see each attraction on the “right day”. However, since we had bought our tickets, we did not have to wait in the long line to buy a ticket and could enter immediately. After entering through the gate you enter the chateau on the right.

The first thing you notice is the vastness of the place. Its humble beginning was a hunting lodge in 1623 and it was expanded by various kings into what it is today. Louis the XIV was most responsible for the creation of the chateau as we know it today. Louis considered himself the “Sun King” and moved the seat of the French government to Versailles. He obviously had no small ego as represented by the hundreds of sculptures and paintings of him. The Chateau de Versailles castle has over 2,000 windows, 700 rooms, over 1,200 fireplaces, and 67 staircases. In 1837 King Louis-Phillipe made the palace a national museum and commissioned 3,000 works of art to adorn its walls.

As you move through the vast halls and rooms of the chateau you get a glimpse of life at the very top of the French social structure in the 18th century. One of the great halls is given to giant paintings of great moments in French history. As with all the art work the paintings are impressive. There is one thing I found quite distasteful: among the beautiful old artworks were modern Japanese sculptures. I thought they would have been more at home in Tate Modern in London or the MOMA in NY. We visited the royal apartments of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, the chapel, and Napoleon’s coronation room, but the most spectacular room was the Hall of Mirrors. The Galerie des Glaces is 250 feet long and has 17 arched mirrors facing the arched windows and the gardens beyond. It was also the room in which the Treaty of Versailles was signed in 1919 ending hostilities with Germany in WWI. Some say this treaty was the beginning of WWII.

We exited the chateau for an overview of the gardens. The Versailles gardens include around 1,300 fountains, which use water pumped from the River Seine. You can view a fountain show at a weekend from April until September. A Dutch couple took our picture and we did the same for them. (We do a lot of this while traveling.) We didn’t tour the gardens. That was a separate ticket, and we did not have the time. At such attractions as this you can spend hours, maybe days, looking at everything. The walk back to the train station was not crowded, a reprieve. We grabbed a café while waiting for the train.

I believe I’ve seen the house of houses, the mansion of mansions, the castle of castles, the palace of palaces and the chateau of chateaus. Chateau de Versailles!

StumbleUpon

Have you tried StumbleUpon?  It's a great browsing program.  With StumbleUpon you chose your area of interest such as Arts,Literature,Movies etc. You can chose multiple interests. When you click Stumble the program finds those websites highlighting your interests. Stumble presents the webpages individually. Not interested? Just click "Stumble" and a new page appears! below is my StumbleUpon page.  Just go to

StumbleUpon.com.

I think you'll like it.

Driving in France

Driving in France was an adventure. I was to be the driver on this trip. It was decided after considering the budgetary constraints on our transportation cost that we would be renting an automobile with a manual transmission. I would have the driving duties. Our rental car was waiting for us in Rouen. We had found that a considerable savings could be realized by picking up rental cars at a location other than the train station. A five euro taxi ride saved us about €100. This was a rental from Hertz; most of the American rental companies are available in France as well as some European ones. We chose a compact Peugeot 206 with a diesel engine. Diesel fuel is only slightly cheaper, but the fuel mileage is considerably greater. This makes a diesel powered compact a very economical choice. I was a bit hesitant about choosing a diesel, but the little Peugeot had no difficulty keeping up with freeway traffic and was very quiet. Be aware that gas stations are not as common as they are in this country and that some of the pumps that take credit cards may not accept a credit card that doesn’t have a chip in it. Insurance is a must. We found that our Visa credit card on which we charged our rental also provided good insurance coverage. We once had the opportunity to test this insurance coverage when we had an accident in Great Britain, and there were no problems. When you pick up your rental car in France it is much the same as here. With the agent you check for dents or other possible defects in the car. In France be sure to check on the emergency accessories. Each vehicle in France must have an emergency triangle sign and a florescent safety vest for each occupant. If the proper authorities catch you without these you can be fined.

Driving can be interesting, but it is great to drive in the right hand lane. Some of the rules of the road are slightly different. Traffic signs are different but not so different that you can't understand them. Turning right on red is illegal. There are few “stop” signs but there are traffic circles galore. It is good to know that you can ride around the traffic circle until you decide which exit is the right one for you. This may sound ridiculous, but consider that you can enter a traffic circle on a specifically numbered highway, but there is no exit for that highway number. It is always best to follow destination signs rather than road numbers. For example, drivers following the N13 south from Cherbourg lose it at Caen, as it becomes the D 613 thereafter! From Evreux to Mantes the "N 13" signs reappear, but after that it's the D 113. Get a good regional map. We used a road map of the entire country, and it simply did not show enough detail. Services such as AAA can provide the maps you need. On some occasions we were able to download Yahoo maps to our iPod for reference. If you are going through a large city get a city map. It often seems that street signage is for people who know where they are, and there is no consistency in street sign location. Unfortunately, sometimes you get misplaced or disoriented (somehow these words sound better than “lost”) and you just have to trust your judgment and be thankful that you did buy fuel at the last opportunity. We once spent two hours in the Pyrenees Mountains and found ourselves at our original starting point! We also found out that you should blow your horn when entering a blind curve to let people know you are coming. Some of these curves were so sharp that you would run on to the shoulder of the road as you navigated around the curve. My travelmate said that if her side of the car had had brakes we would still be in the mountains!





The quality of French roads is great, better than those of Britain. They range from the four-lane superhighways to the narrow one-lane mountain roads. Almost all the superhighways are toll roads. They are a great timesaver, unless you like a leisurely drive in the French countryside. We like both. Be aware that the toll booths are usually automated and if you have a problem you may be speaking to an attendant remotely who doesn’t understand your language. This happened to us once. Like many toll roads when entering you get a ticket and upon exit you insert it into the machine at the exit and it tells you what you owe. You can pay by coin or credit card. In our case it would not accept our card. Fortunately a young man in an Audi behind us saw our dilemma and came to our rescue. By communicating in French to the off-site attendant he found that the machine was not reading our ticket correctly. Thank heavens for good Samaritans. The speed limit on the toll roads is 130 kph which is about 80 mph. It’s interesting to see a passenger train pass you at this speed when near a railway. Some of the French trains reach speeds nearing 200 mph. The left lane on the four-lane is for passing only. You don’t see people driving mile after mile in the left lane like you do here. We found most French drivers very courteous. They never blew their horn at me unless I deserved it. On two occasions I deserved it. Also be aware that in some areas the roads are frequently used by agricultural equipment. I remember that in the Provence area of France the roads were almost clogged with small tractors pulling wagons full of grapes. There seems to be a great many bicyclists on the rural roads as well. These are the people that are helmeted and in spandex uniforms on expensive racing machines. I saw few bike lanes as these would-be Tour de France participants crowded the roads in some areas.



Parking seems to be a problem everywhere. There is little free parking in France. Only in the smallest villages and Vaison la Romaine did we see free parking. There were no parking meters. There was a machine from which to buy a ticket to display on your dash showing how much parking time you bought. It was a good reason to keep a few €1 coins handy. One interesting thing to note is that we never saw a machine that would allow you to purchase a full day of parking; the most you could get was six hours. This presented a problem for us in Villefranche-sur-mer when we were leaving the car for a day trip by train. However, a helpful desk clerk took care of this for us. We were going to Nice, and the Sunday afternoon before I had all the Nice traffic I could handle. Had I been a good Catholic I would have been in confession bright and early. After checking into our hotel in the Dordogne valley the desk clerk told me I only had to pay for parking ‘til five o’clock. The signs indicated that it should be paid ‘til six, but she said that the policeman went home at five. It pays to be friendly with the “locals”. In some cities parking is free on Sunday. Don’t take chances; the police will tow cars away for parking violations. As anywhere, exercise care when driving.

Although the French have had a notoriously bad accident record (around twice the number of fatal accidents per head of population in 2001 when compared with the UK or Japan) the government is making efforts to reduce the accident levels. This has meant increased use of radar - particularly common during the beginning and end of holiday periods - and stricter laws on alcohol.

Driving in France was an enjoyable experience and I’d do it again. Next time I’d get a car with a GPS navigation system or carry my own.

Cowboy Songs

I have always like the western films and like wise I'm fond of almost anything "cowboy". Here I've put together some of my favorite cowboy songs. Performer-wise they pretty much run the gamut.   Included are the singing cowboys of the movies,  Roy Rogers and Gene Autry. Who can forget the string of western hits Marty Robbins had.  Wasn't that a great quartet of Johnny Cash, Kris Kristopherson, Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings?  The Sons of the San Joaquin  tell the story better than I can.


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I couldn't resist this Roy and Trigger video.  Boy did I think this was cool way back when.  Yes, I wanted to grow up to be a cowboy.