Where is everyone?

Washington D.C. after New York City

Monday
Emerging from L’Enfant Plaza subway in Washington DC at seven in the evening, there is virtually no-one on the streets. It’s right in the centre of town on the map, a 5 minute walk from the Mall and all the museums. It seems clean and safe – but deserted. We suffer culture shock after the bustle of Manhattan. Maybe we should have read the warning signs when we discovered that the last commuter train left Union Station at 18.10. There’s nowhere to eat in the immediate vicinity of the hotel (which would have housed over 100 options in New York!).
The street outside our hotel in Washington D.C. with noone around
Outside our Washington hotel at seven in the evening…
Picture of 34th street in the early evening in Manhattan
…and Manhattan at the same sort of time
Then we find a dockside development a 15 minute walk away and find life. Lots of it, mainly in the form of hundreds of nice youngsters dressed up to the nines, queuing in an unimaginably long queue to see Latto at The Academy. We laugh that it’s even worse than Amtrak at Penn Station, where they only announce the platform as the train arrives in. (To get the best seats, people guess the track and start the queue hoping they are in the right place before it’s announced!) The youngsters are 99.9% black, but then Latto is a rapper, so that’s the demographic. After a delicious Lebanese meal, we walk back through the empty streets. Will all of Washington be as sleepy as this?
Friday
Well, it has been sleepy – compared to Manhattan, at least.  But that’s not to say that our stay hasn’t been very enjoyable.
A reproduction of a Paris Metro entrance in the sculpture park of the Washington DC Museum of Art
In the Museum of Art sculpture park
I’m sitting in the warm sun (some 26º) in the sculpture park of the National Gallery of Art, next to an Alexander Calder and a reproduction Paris Metro entrance, relaxing before taking the train to Philadelphia this afternoon. The sparcely frequented Mall is home to a stack of superb museums, each with loads of space for the exhibits to shine. There are also the National Archives, Library of Congress, the Capitol, White House and a string of moving memorials. What a feast these have been!

Washington isn’t packed with humanity like Manhattan. It’s much more typically American, with lots of space. The grid of wide boulevards was laid out in 1791 by a Frenchman, Pierre L’Enfant, as he devised the urban plan for the new federal capital of the young nation. Now, the boulevards are multi-lane roads, and being a car town, there isn’t a central focus of everything but rather a number of spread out neighbourhoods with different characteristics. Most people get to and from here by plane: from the expanse of the verdant park of the Mall we see the aeroplanes lining up to land at the city centre airport just along the river. The only transport oddity are the frequent and unmistakable hoots of American trains, audible for miles around, reminiscent of a Wild West era long gone.
Picture of the Lincoln Memorial from half way down the Mall in Washington D.C.
The Lincoln Memorial from halfway down the Mall. The Capitol is the same distance away behind.
The Mall, just longer than Central Park from end to end, has been a relaxing and uncrowded base during the unseasonable heatwave. To eat in the evenings, though, we have taken subways or buses out to inner suburban residential centres like Adams Morgan or Georgetown. Our hotel is an area dominated by federal buildings – departments of housing, agriculture etc – and the office workers clearly don’t venture out, as there are no 7/11 s or shops at all and only one small Starbucks (with no seating). The contrast with Manhattan could not be more stark!
Scan of the original document used in the first US Congress meeting with hand-written amendments to the proposed new Constitution
Hand-written amendments to the first Constitution from the first US Congress meeting in 1789
It was touching to see in the National Archive the working document from the first meeting of Congress in 1789, with hand-written amendments to the American Constitution, as well as the original Declaration of Independence. The challenges of a federal structure are clear from the amendments made at the very first meeting of Congress. The fading documents provide some insight into the American psyche: the strong desire for self-determination and the importance of liberty of the individual. But all the rhetoric about liberty is hard to square with the rampant slavery of the time, and then segregation later. It’s shocking that segregation in America was only formally ended in 1964, when back in 1776 the Declaration of Independence stated:

”…that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”
I suppose, therefore, that it’s not surprising that I felt a faint whiff of black and white societies that don’t mix much in Washington. I suspect this is more socio-economic group than race driven. That said, we met nothing but friendly people of all colours and backgrounds, and it’s all much more relaxed than the hectic melting-pot of all the world’s cultures that is New York. Vive la différence!
by Chris

More tales

The liner Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse

Then and now

Crossing the Atlantic by ship

Looking down the long corridor of cabins on the Queen Mary 2

Keeping active

Getting to and from your cabin is just the start

The console of the Wanamaker Grand Court Organ in Macy's Philadelphia

Shop n stops

The world's largest organ is in ... Macy's!