Day three of our college visits trip didn’t start out well. I woke up before my alarm but at a reasonable hour, and I immediately realized I hadn’t charged my phone or taken out my contacts the night before. I guess I was more tired than I realized!
I worked for an hour and then got ready while I was on a call for a not-for-profit board I sit on. Ellie wasn’t ready as early as we’d hoped, so I went to the free breakfast buffet at our hotel and grabbed a few things to take back to the room. The food was not good. There were microwaved breakfast sandwiches that were still cold in the middle, and pastries that tasted mostly like cardboard. I took one bite of each, warned Ellie off, and threw them out. We decided we’d grab coffee and breakfast in the Georgetown area when we got there, and we checked out of our room and left our bags with the front desk.
We took a Lyft to Georgetown because it was already too humid to walk to the Metro station. I had forgotten just how hard it is to get around D.C. above ground. Everything is on ramps and off ramps and bridges. Still, our driver dropped us at Georgetown’s gates with plenty of time for us to walk a couple blocks to a coffee shop and make our 10 am tour of Georgetown.
The Georgetown area was still requiring masks, which was fine with us. We had to go inside the hall that houses the admissions office to check in for the tour, but then we waited outside under a large tent they’d put up on the building’s patio. There was seating and shade, but not a seat in the shade. We chose to stand.
The Georgetown tour was very different than the Villanova one. For one, we had two tour guides. I suspected, and at the end of the tour it was confirmed, that the guy who did most of the talking was in training. He did a good job, but neither Ellie nor I connected with him like we did the Villanova student. We did both liked Olivia, the more experienced guide who was training him. But the tour itself largely lacked substance. There was pretty much no discussion of academics, and we didn’t go inside any buildings (due to COVID). The campus also had more of a city feel that Ellie wants, and so in the end I don’t think she’s going to apply to Georgetown.
The tour was also longer than the one at Villanova, and it was after 11:30 when it finished. We visited the bookstore (we still had to buy a shirt, but at least no weird clerks this time), then walked to the sort of main drag, M Street NW. We had lunch at a restaurant called Good Stuff and then got dessert from Georgetown Cupcake, which Ellie told me was famous. The cupcakes were fine. Maybe we are just spoiled by how good The Flying Cupcake in Indianapolis used to be, but neither of us felt like Georgetown Cupcake was anything special. Interestingly, the person who served us at Georgetown Cupcake was Olivia, our tour guide, so that was fun. We did a little shopping and found a CVS where I was able to buy a travel size sunscreen. We’d carried on our luggage, and I didn’t have room in my liquids bag for sunscreen and didn’t realize we would have such a hard time finding a place to buy it. With the immense heat, it was good to have some protection.
At that point we were probably only about half a mile from our hotel, but we were both too hot and tired to face the walk, so I called a Lyft to take us back. We bought some drinks, sat in the lobby, and cooled down. Ellie worked on her common app some more, and I had a work call and did some more work projects. After a couple hours we were ready to explore again. I checked a map and determined that the closest monument was the Lincoln Memorial, which is a good one!
We left the hotel on foot and walked to the monument. It was pretty crowded. I have this weird thing where I must have a nice face, because right after I took a selfie of Ellie and me in front of Abe Lincoln, a stranger came up and asked if I’d take a picture, using his phone, of him and his companion. We both commented on how often strangers ask me favors, then moments later as I finished a picture of Ellie with the Mall behind her, a woman came up and asked me if I would call a number she had written down. She said her phone had died. I was considering in my head whether this could be some kind of a scam when I realized the number on the paper had a 317 – Indianapolis – area code. I asked if she was from Indianapolis and she said she lived there when she got the phone number. Since it’s a small world, I let her use the phone. Of course, after the lady finished her call and we walked away, Ellie and I spent more time trying to decide what it is about me that makes people choose me as the stranger they approach. We never really reached a conclusion, though!
We decided to walk down the Mall to the Washington Monument. The whole time we were touring the Mall, Ellie kept repeating this quote from Forrest Gump, which we’d watched in Philly: “So, I went out for a walk to see our nation’s Capitol.” It was not a great Forrest Gump impression, but funny because of how she just kept saying it.
At the end of the Reflecting Pool is the World War II memorial. This memorial was dedicated in 2004, which was after my last visit to the National Mall. (I’ve been to the D.C. area since then, but always on work trips with almost no time for sightseeing.). It was gorgeous! I took some pictures, but it was such a sunny day that the lighting was challenging. It was great to see people interacting with the monument in ways that were clearly contemplated by the designer. I didn’t even know it was there, so it was a great surprise.
The next monument we encountered was the Washington Monument. As we were approaching, I asked Ellie if it was ok if we didn’t go up in it. In my opinion, the elevator is scary, and the view is not worth it. Ellie didn’t even know you could go up in it and was totally ok with not. She did want to lick the Monument, though. Gross, yes. But apparently she’d licked it when she came to D.C. on her eighth grade trip, and she wanted to maintain the tradition. I caught a picture as she did it, and the “there, I did it” face she made afterward.
As we left the Washington Monument area we saw the Smithsonian Museum of African American History. I really wanted to go there because there’s an exhibit about an Indiana town and a museum founded by a former colleague. Unfortunately, this Smithsonian museum had really bad hours. It wasn’t even 5:00, and it had already been closed for a couple hours. Plus it’s only open Wednesday through Sunday, and what’s up with that? I was disappointed.
Our plan had been to spend an hour or so in the museum, then walk to the Capitol Building. Without a break in air conditioning, neither of us wanted to walk that far. We decided to go to dinner, and Ellie was in the mood for Italian, so I found a place that looked good and we took a Lyft there. Our Lyft driver, Mohammad, was really sweet. He was Afghani, probably in his mid-twenties, and in the U.S. on a special visa, which I assume means he provided assistance to our troops in Afghanistan. He told us how hard it was to leave his family, and how he was really hoping to get his fiancée and parents to the U.S. This was after the U.S. had announced its withdrawal from Afghanistan, but before the Taliban took over the cities. I refrained from asking him whether the situation worried him; how could it not? Now, six and a half weeks later, with the Taliban in charge of Afghanistan, people clamoring to leave, and ISIS-K performing acts of terror, I think about that nice young man, my heart breaks, and I pray for the safety of his loved ones.
We had a good but not great dinner and then walked about a half mile back to our hotel. The front door of the hotel is always locked, and since we had checked out, we didn’t have keys to get in. The front desk clerk was actually outside when we arrived, and she asked us if we were checking in. We reminded her that we had checked out but left our luggage with her, and we mentioned that we had a couple hours to kill until it was time to leave for our train, but that we were too tired and hot to do any more sightseeing. I had to go to the bathroom, and as I entered I heard the clerk ask Ellie what our room number had been. When I left the restroom Ellie told me the clerk said we could go back up to the room if we wanted, because it hadn’t been cleaned and wouldn’t be until the next day. Yes, please!
I think that clerk was sent from heaven, because going back gave us both the chance to shower before we boarded the overnight train to Boston. My shower felt like heaven! When I exited the bathroom, dressed in clean clothes and totally refreshed, Ellie was eating the ice cream she’d left in the freezer. A couple of times during the day she’d mentioned how she hated leaving that ice cream, and now she was able to finish it off. The last great thing about being in the room is that it had enough outlets to charge all our devices. We were in much better shape when we left for the train station than we would have been after a couple hours in the lobby.
It’s probably a good thing that we were in a good state, because our drive was scary. The driver was really aggressive, and the car smelled like weed. I was super relieved — and a little carsick — when we arrived at Union Station. It was 9:00, and unfortunately everything was closed when we arrived, which meant we weren’t able to get bottles of water to take with us. I had also hoped to buy flowers for our friends we were meeting in Boston, but I had to give up on that idea as well.
The wait was not bad, and soon we were boarding and finding our sleeper car. This was the first time in a sleeper compartment for both Ellie and me, and we weren’t very sure what to expect. The compartment was definitely smaller than I’d imagined. I was thinking very small dorm room with bunk beds, but it was more like walk-in closet with seats that turned into beds.
Actually, the design of the sleeper was really impressive. On the window side were two seats facing each other. They were close enough that our knees touched if we didn’t alternate their positions. Between the seats and the window was a narrow sill with a little ledge, cup holders, and a pull-out table. On the aisle side of one seat was a toilet and a pull-down sink. The toilet and the area in front of the seat doubled as steps to the top bunk, which was a pull-down bed. On the aisle side of the other seat was just a little shelf. And finally, way up at the top of the car over the aisle was a little cubby for luggage. I honestly can’t believe everything they packed into such a tiny space. There were also a lot of light switches and a volume button for the train’s announcement system, which was convenient for resting and sleeping.
Our attendant, who we learned was named Tim, had left water bottles and snack boxes for us. And he told us that we had free drinks (alcoholic for me, alcohol-free for Ellie) from the bar when the dining car opened. Tim was great, made sure he knew where we were getting off, and asked when we wanted him to convert our compartment for sleeping. We asked for an hour to wind down, and he was off.
Right around that hour mark, after I’d drunk a beer and Ellie had been reading, we got very sleepy. I pulled the sink down to wash my hands so I could take out my contacts, and I sprayed poor Ellie, who was right beside the sink, with rebound water bouncing off my hands. The water was pretty high pressure, so there was no avoiding the spray. Still, it was nice to be able to do our bedtime things right there in the compartment and not share a bathroom with dozens of other people, like you do on an airplane.
Tim arrived to get our beds ready, and thankfully Ellie took the top bunk. We turned out the lights, and I was fairly comfortable, although it would have been more comfortable if I was about six inches shorter. Still, I was laying flat, and I was eventually able to fall asleep. Which I never do on a plane, so I continue in my belief that train travel is superior to plane travel in nearly every way.
