Hello there, our most loyal blog readers! Well, you know how it goes at the end of a long trip: You come home, realize you’ve got a ton of laundry to do, the kids have to get ready for school the next day, and you’ve got to get their lunches ready, then herd them off to bed. You thought you were going to write the blog entry on the way home on the airplane, but instead, you realized that pretty good Delta Wi-Fi meant you could actually use the MLB app to watch the Blue Jays-Phillies game. So, instead of writing, you watched Kyle Schwarber hit three home runs to defeat your Blue Jays 10 to 9 in another heartbreaking loss for Canada’s team. You know how that goes? (I’m sure the exact thing has happened to all of you…) So, you decide to go to bed and do the blog entry in the morning, instead of staying up later than you already are to make sure that final entry gets done?
We won’t do that to you. We could never do that to you. Our blog readers are such a fantastic group of folks; you deserve to hear about our final half-day in D.C. before we call it a night. And so, here you go.
We arose on day six with simple missions: Food, some personal family history, and a couple of fun landmarks that we’ve been trying to get to that it looked like now was the right time for us to visit.
If you are a regular public radio listener, you’ve probably heard the phrase, “from NPR news in Washington…” more times than you can count. So today, we realized that NPR news in Washington was actually “NPR news about four blocks away from our hotel.” So off we went to the headquarters of National Public Radio! It should be noted that this was purely for “outside sign photo” purposes. There’s no gift shop, and even though there is some kind of display in the lobby, we were told by security it was most definitely NOT open to the public. Oops! But for us, it WAS worth stopping by just to see the building from which so many of our favorites originate, from the NPR Politics Podcast (Mackie’s favorite!) to the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast, to all of those morning and weekend editions too numerous to consider. It was fun to check out, and be sure to read all the way to the end today for a special message Mackie taped outside NPR HQ.
Now let’s move to the food!
For many days on this trip, we’ve been taking advantage of a local outlet of the national chain Corner Bakery, located literally steps away from our hotel. Much cheaper than the hotel breakfast, much better than fast food, but a little boring and repetitious? Fortunately, Emily had eyes on one of her old haunts from when she was a student in D.C. two decades ago - the famed Kramers bookstore, bar, and restaurant. And so off we went, trekking (via Metro, of course) from NPR to Dupont Circle. The food was really good! No complaints from me. So were the books!
Probably the longest escalator ride of the whole trip came on the last day, at Dupont Circle.
Side note: You could tell it was a D.C. bookstore because the politics section was kind of crazy. Also, there were signed copies of a lot of books that you wouldn’t expect to see signed copies of in a more traditional bookstore. Listen, I don’t know who is desperate for that signed copy of an analysis of labor cases argued before the Supreme Court in the 1920s, but if you’re looking for it, this is the type of place that DEFINITELY would have one.
As we headed back to Union Station, we realized we had enough time left in our day for a visit to a museum located just across the street from our “home base” subway stop on the way back to our hotel. We’re talking here about the Smithsonian National Postal Museum - and we’re super glad we stopped in! Lots of cool interactive exhibits about how mail gets sorted (turns out, we’re all terrible at 1960’s-era manual letter sorting), or how packages are dispatched. Plus, as one of the rotating exhibits, they’re featuring baseball! The National Baseball Hall of Fame has loaned out a bunch of cool artifacts with connections to the stamp collecting world, including Bobby Thompson’s bat with which he hit “The Shot Heard Around The World,” a dagger through the hearts of Dodger fans which, naturally, was later immortalized on a postage stamp.
We also got to see the stamp collection of the San Fernando Valley’s own Sally Ride, who, in addition to being the first US woman in space, was also a huge stamp collector and, it turns out, a Dodgers fan. Throw in the fact that she also appeared on a stamp after her own sad passing, and you’ve got a perfect triple play on display at the museum. Really, if you’re looking for a quick experience with a high coolness factor, then this is perhaps the best kind of museum: You can do it all in about an hour, maybe expand it out to an hour and a half if you’re really into stamps and postal history. Again, I’m gonna have to give this one a high recommendation if you have like a 90-minute gap to fill and you happen to be at Union Station.
Sadly, this brought to an end our planned activities, and so it was back to the hotel to gather our bags, return to Union Station, and hop back aboard D.C.’s extraordinarily useful public transit system, which took us right out to Reagan National Airport. I don’t know what Los Angeles’ deal is, but it will never be able to come up with a public transit system as simple and useful as the great metro system in Washington D.C. The geography of Southern California just won’t allow it. And that’s too bad because having a well-designed, well-run metro option to go just about anywhere is awesome.
As good as a "Red Baron" from Carney's? Nah...
Oh, there was one last touristy thing we did at the airport: I had been meaning to swing by a Ben’s Chili Bowl while I was in D.C., and while the place is acknowledged as a regional delicacy, I found it to be quite lacking. (Sorry, Ben!) Now before you jump all over my case, it’s certainly possible that the Ben’s Chili Bowl at the airport does not serve the same type of chili that they serve in Ben’s Chili Bowls at the restaurants peppered throughout the D.C. area.
However, I did try their signature menu item, the half smoke chili dog thing, and found it to be approximately one-third as appealing as any random hotdog off the menu at Carney’s. The chili cheese fries were a little better, but still, this chili is a big deal? Not where I come from… I promise I’ll try again at a real Ben’s Chili Bowl restaurant the next time I’m in D.C., but the airport version simply didn’t do it for me.
Ready to be home? You bet! Ready for 100+ degree days? No way!
A couple of final notes to round out the blog:
It would be difficult for me to overstate just how wonderful the girls were on this entire trip. Both Mackie and Daphne were SO AMAZING, being flexible, being adventurous, being supportive… They really are remarkable young women, and I cannot tell you how proud I was of them during this whole trip.
In fact, the only thing more wonderful than the girls may have been my beloved wife, Emily. This was a dream trip of hers for many years, and it’s difficult to imagine a way in which it could have gone better than it actually did. And that was due almost entirely to Emily’s meticulous planning, effort, vision, support, and love that she put into every moment of this trip. Sweetie, you are truly, truly remarkable… And I am SO, so very lucky to be married to you! I love you very much. And thank you. For everything.
For now, dear blog readers, we best leave it to Mackie to sign us off! We’ll probably sneak back on later this week with a final, final update, including some concluding thoughts from the other travelers. But for now, Mackie … take it away!
