JOURNEY
1
* Click on Pictures to enlarge
Trip to Washington DC / Wilmington 7-12 April 2006
After a quite relaxing flight trip via New York (JFK) - where I had not read well
all the signs at security, so I was taken apart to take my shoes off, but thank
God no spurs of any suspect substances where detected in their spectrographic
device- I arrived save and well in Washington DC.
The Monaco Hotel, where I stayed until Sunday, is a quite famous hotel, a
previous National Historic Landmark, with all types of rooms, located from the
top of the building till the lower basement, where you can only see the feet of
people walking by on the pavement, if you happen to have a room there...like I
did :-(
A greek style Front (first picture) makes an immediate big impression, as
well as the "spooky" corridors (next 2 pictures) that reminded me at the
movie "The Shining" (with good old Jack Nicholson chasing Shelley
Duval).
The bar confronted me suddenly with Belgian French fries, served in conical paper
bags, as they used to serve them decades ago in Belgium.....I felt a little
bit home again...., especially when I noticed they even offered one of the most
strongest Belgian Beers, the 8,5% "Delirium tremens" (whatīs in the
name !).
(Note: for hygienic reasons of course, the inside of the fake newspaperbag
contains another bag without any imprints)
Over the weekend, I made a guided trolley bus tour to Georgetown and back, a
famous quarter in Washington with typical houses like "Mr Smithīs, the
friendliest saloon in town". Later at night, our local colleagues advised to have
a stroll in the area called "Adamīs Morgan" and experience a live
band at "Madamīs Organ": It was really worth the trip! What a
good "ambience" (to use the correct French word)
On Sunday, the weather was suddenly superb and of course a walk to Capitol
Hill is mandatory. On our way back, passing through the park along all the musea (modern arts,
dinosaurs,...), I found out how inventive some people can be, eg. in making instruments
from the simpliest things; from far I heard "tam-tams" but
looking closer, it turned out to be a collection of wasted buckets and every bucket was either in another material (metal, plastic) or
was filled differently, producing all the necessary vibrating sounds....
Sunday evening we took the train at Union Station to Wilmington, where I had
to go to for business purposes. While Union Station proves that taking the
train some 100 years ago, was a privilege for the more wealthy people,
Wilmington station clearly has some sympathy generating flair, but could
certainly use a few extra stripes of paint........
That was the last notifiable item of this journey, and one day later I had a
quite flight back to Brussels......
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