Which State, Where?
Gregg and I plan a jaunt to Washington DC for a night at the theatre before we part ways. He really shouldn’t leave me in charge of booking the tickets. I book into a show and when the confirmation comes through discover it is not in Washington DC –- it is in the next state over. Luckily Maryland is not too far off, so Gregg is amenable…before the drive. He is kind enough not to bring it up when getting to Bethesda takes hours longer than it should courtesy of horrendous traffic, all in pouring rain.
The theatre is Art Deco styled and half-hidden. When we get to the door we initially think it’s closed, but when we give it a tentative shove it opens and we spy a few people are lurking in the bar. The show is called Men Fake Foreplay and is a one-man piece by a standup comedian called Michael Dugan. It’s brilliant. Extremely funny with touching moments thrown in and some perceptive observations about where it all goes wrong between men and women.
Culture completed we overnight in a mid-range hotel.
Hanging in the Cemetary
Gregg gives me a lift to Virginia Square metro stop in Arlington, Virginia. Arlington used to be part of DC – when the capital was decided, both Virginia and Maryland donated land, but Virginia took their portion back later. I think it was around the time DC began the anti-slavery campaign, which wouldn’t have been good for Virginia’s plantations. The Potomac River is now the dividing line between DC and Virginia.
Murali, a friend I met in Tokyo over four years ago, meets me at the metro and we pop back to his place nearby. I have never seen a male-inhabited apartment this clean. I wonder if he’s cleaned in my honour, but apparently he really is that tidy. We head to a café for a light lunch, then catch the metro to Arlington Cemetery, which takes ages – we have to pick up a connecting line and there is a twenty-minute wait between trains. Arlington is not made for my impatience.
Arlington Cemetery is a military cemetery with graves from all of the different wars America has been involved in since the Revolution. As you can imagine, it is immense – it covers 612 acres. It feels like we walk most of these over the next three hours. The highlight is the Tomb of the Unknowns, where military guards perform a changing of the guard ritual every half hour or so. They keep a round-the-clock vigil. I don’t envy them being in the middle of the graveyard late at night. John F Kennedy is buried here also, his grave marked by an eternal flame.
My favourite story is that of Arlington House. Robert E. Lee left his house to command the North Virginian army. The property was confiscated and Union soldiers were buried around the property so Lee couldn’t return. After the Civil War it became the National Cemetery, and then Mrs. Lee was awarded the estate in a court case, but sold it back to the Government for $150,000. From this spot, you can see some of the monuments in Washington. Murali points out the Lincoln Memorial. Then points to something else that he thinks is actually the Lincoln Memorial, then something else that might be it too. This is about the time I stop trusting Murali’s geographical knowledge.
The cemetery is full of memorials along with usual graves. There is one to the astronauts of the space shuttle Challenger and also one to the Pan Am 103 Flight – the one that crashed into the Trade Centre. The final memorial we see is just outside the cemetery and is the Marine Corps Memorial, more commonly known as the Iwo Jima memorial, built entirely from donations. The men depicted in the memorial were real Marines. It’s particularly sad when you realise that after that battle, those who were lucky enough to return almost all suffered from survivor’s guilt. I think this is also the battle that left the U.S. with way too many bases in Okinawa, Japan.
By the end of the day, Murali seems to be running a fever, but he recovers enough to take me out to a Japanese restaurant for dinner, in honour of the country we met in. We drive through the yuppie DC district of Georgetown and walk into an unpretentious, minimalistic room. The only decoration is a subtle row of white paper lanterns hanging from the ceiling. We order the Chef’s Special, which is a series of six small dishes, dependent on the Chef’s mood. We mostly get different dishes, so we share, trying a total of ten different dishes – the first dish and the sushi course are the same. We start with marinated eel on a cucumber salad. I’m not an eel fan, but this is mouthwatering. The next dishes are Carpaccio – one plate of flounder with sesame tasting dressing and one of salmon with salmon caviar and spring onions. Next is soup – a miso-based seafood soup and a clear lobster broth. Course four is lobster tail with spinach in a creamy dressing, and lightly seared tuna. Then comes the sushi – one each of raw prawn, tuna, salmon, flounder, scallop and uni (sea urchin). I haven’t tried uni for about fifteen years as I didn’t like it the first time I tried it. It’s time to try again. I still don’t like it. This is the only item we are both disappointed with. Dessert to finish is a coffee panna cotta. I prefer my coffee in a cup, but I eat every morsel and lick the spoon, The tempura bananas with ice cream are still more my style.
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