Let Me Say This About That

Our month in Washington DC was wonderful; we could easily have spent another month or more there.  At first as we were trying to find our slip and dock the boat, I was disappointed in Gangplank Marina.  The fairways were narrow, the slips were narrow with weeds growing up the sides of the finger dock, and there were so many older boats and houseboats that looked, shall I say not well maintained, that I feared that we were going to be uncomfortable here.  That lasted about one hour.  The staff was friendly and helpful, the washrooms were totally out of character for my first impressions and the other boaters and live aboards were very friendly and likable.  The location was superb and we quickly acclimatized to the DC life including riding the DC Circulator (ie. a superb bus loop that only cost a dollar), eating in trendy restaurants in the Penn Quarter and Chinatown and visiting the numerous sites and attractions.

The fact that we were not alone also made the visit that much more special.  Jack and Lynn on Felix was there for most of the month.  They are fellow Loopers whom we first met in Port St. Joe in the Florida Panhandle.  Lynn cooked the American Thanksgiving turkey for our pleasure back then.  They are also card players so we had a number of fun evenings playing Cribbage, The Board Game.  For the sake of full disclosure I have to say that Jack and I dominated the girls in this endeavour.  They were also very kind to take us with their vehicle to re-provision a couple of times.

David and Brenda on The Old Grouch, fellow Loopers whom we travelled with on Lake Michigan and more of the inland rivers, drove up from Baltimore on two separate occasions.  Both times we had excellent visits, in fact we were able to join them to visit Arlington and Mount Vernon. 

We met many interesting locals from the Marina and were able to share drinks and stories.  We were welcomed to all of their events and enjoyed them thoroughly.  One couple, John and Cheryl on Happy Destiny, wanted some good competition in Euchre.  You see, Cheryl is from Michigan and since we were from Windsor, she correctly assumed that we knew how to play the game.  Well John and I succeeded in teaching the girls some lessons. 

Another couple Cory and Lou on Sio Sogno, a Silverton aft cabin on our dock, stopped us and asked where they had seen our boat before.  Of course they had not but insisted that we seemed familiar to them.  As it turns out they are fellow members of the SOC (Silverton Owners Club) and had read a couple of the entries about our trip in the monthly newsletter.  It was like we were old friends.  They even took us out for an afternoon in their boat to view some of the local sights.  Great fun.

I may have said this before, the buildings, monuments and museums in Washington just blow me away.  They are huge, the architecture impressive and everything is very well done.  It is difficult to pick favorites because there are so many that are so well done.  The interior of the Library of Congress was unbelievable; it was perhaps the best interior.  The monuments were all impressive but the Korean, Vietnam and World War II war memorials were my favorites.  As for the museums, all of the Smithsonian Museums were well done and priced right but my favorites from an interest point of view were the Newseum and the Crime and Punishment and the Spy Museums.I did not write up our visit to the Holocaust Museum because it disturbed me greatly.  The numbers of people which were needlessly killed bothered me for a long time and I just could not bring myself to write about the horrors. 

We found a number of good restaurants but our favorite was Pho DC, a Vietnamese noodle house which is located in Chinatown.  Linda is mad that we did not get there a third time. 

Unfortunately, we did not, could not, see it all.  It was a great visit and I will leave you with a few photos which we took while in DC.

Smithsonian Castle

Torpedo Factory, Alexandria

Museum of Natural History

J Edgar Hoover Building, FBI Headquarters

Newseum Post; I had no idea my brother was a celebrity.



US Botanical Garden

North and South American Indian Museum



The White House