Friday

Our New York friends arrived in a Greyhound bus yesterday afternoon. Normally I'd have been in a cleaning frenzy; but since I'd taken care of all that Wednesday, I ate a nice lunch instead. I didn't even have to make the bed since it was housekeeping day. After, I took a leisurely stroll to the DC bus station, located directly behind the DC train station, directly beneath the Metrorail tracks between Rhode Island Avenue and Union Station stops. The first world has such contempt for bus traveling: though we were able to watch this modern miracle of public transportation passing by overhead, the bus depot is denied a convenient Metro stop. We decided to saunter to the National Mall for some hot DC tourism between the Capitol and Washington Monument. Mentally italicize hot. Otherwise we had a nice Vietnamese dinner near home and crashed pretty early. This afternoon I met our visitors where they were already on the move at the National Gallery.¹ Then we headed across the Mall for a nifty lunch at the Museum of the American Indian,² where the cafeteria is divided into different pre-Columbian stations. I had cornpone, Pacific Northwest salmon, and Mesoamerican hibiscus flower tea. Then we headed to the Natural History museum³ to look at the Hope Diamond and dinosaur bones before meeting up with Sunshine in the crowded mammal hall. We spent another hour or so looking around various museum shops before walking five blocks to Jaleo⁴ for an excellent tapas dinner. My word, but that's a good restaurant--highlights were too numerous to relate in what space remains. Our friends pointed out the stinging irony of kicking off Columbus Day weekend with a native American lunch followed by a Spanish dinner, but it was too good to feel guilty about. [Cavin]