Fossils and diamonds - USA Day five or so

(Wriiting this offline on the Amtrak train to New York. So it won't have clever links or what have you till I get online and maybe edit it!)

Wednesday, I made it to yet another of the Smithsonian's - Washington Mall must have more museum space than the whole of Australia...

The Natural History museum is the place the keep all the fossils and other "natural" items - jems and the like. I'm actually being fairly ruthless with the museums here, and dismissing whole areas out of hand. The natural history museum had lots of stuff one can't see in Oz, such as piles of dinosaur and trilobite fossils, unique diamonds and the like. It also had rooms and rooms of stuffed animals, which I have no real interest in. Although I was slightly amused by the display of stuffed Australian animals, and listening to an American try and pronounce "Marsupial".

The galleries of fossils were great, kind of tracing the history of life from the earliest single celled thingies through trilobites and on to dinosaurs. It was great watching evolution at work - hope some of them creationists pop in there and see how awesome nature really is on its own. There was a whole section on the evolution of horses, some great megafauna fossils, and various naturally mummified bison.

There was also a rather interesting section dedicated to some digging they've done around the first settlement in Jamestown(?) Virginia. They'd dug up a whole lot of graves of the early settlers and lots of related artefacts. I thought it a bit odd that they didn't seem to have any concerns digging up graves only 400 years old - recently enough that there could theoretically be living relatives. Although give that the death rate in the colony seemed to run about 30% a year, and it didn't last very long, I'm guessing not a lot of those buried went on to have descendants! And it did sound like a nearby river was in the process of washing the site away.

They also had some random things like a display of living insects and the odd spider. I imagine they must occasionally feed one to the other... There were some Australian stick insects, and for some reason every time I see something from "home" i get all excited!

One of the main things I'd come to see was a particular diamond. A largish blue diamond with a long and complicated history including being owned by Louis the 14th, being stolen during the French revolution, etc. etc. It's called the Hope diamond after a bloke who owned it in the early eighteen hundreds. I read a rather melodramatic book about it that I picked up at random from a bookshop in Geelong, and it peaked my interest - a blue stone with some history. It's also the only thing mentioned by name on the map for this Smithsonian. So I went and looked at it. It is indeed blue and rather sparkly in the way diamonds are, and somewhat smaller than I expected - every though it has a whole room devoted to it!

After all that, I was a bit over looking at things in glass cases, and decided to go do something a little less mentally taxing. I was hunting for an unlocked cell phone, since the spare Nokia I brought with me doesn't work here... Which I was assured it would! The nearest Best Buy I could find was out a bit east of the city centre. Now, Washington has some dodgy areas, so being the cautious tourist that I am I looked up the suburb in question - Columbia Heights - on the Wikipedia before I hopped on the Green Line out there. It looked OK. But then I re-read it on the once I was on the train, and realised I was heading into an area that could be scary. The population mix was noted as being "5.8% white", so I was going to stick out like a sore thumb! I put on my mean aviator sunglasses and my headphones and tried to look what I knew what I was doing.

(Random bit of technology helpfulness. Laura who I was staying with saw me mention Columbia Heights on Twitter, and sent me a SMS telling me to be careful!)

So, my trip to Columbia Heights consisted of.... Getting off the train, taking the escalator up to ground level, crossing a street, and going into a Mall! Scary stuff! And then a bit later doing the reverse. Best Buy wasn't much to look at - a bit like office works with basically the same things at basically the same prices. And of course they didn't have any unlocked cell phones left. So if any of you are trying to contact me on my Australian number, you won't get through!

Afterwards Laura told me that it's like the scariest part of Washington, although it has been moving up in the world. I said hey I was just in the subway station.... where apparently there have been two murders in the last couple of months! Hooray. But I survived. I've not travelled much but I am relatively sensible.

Old Friends and Duck Fat

Wednesday evening we went out for dinner at an "English" themed pub somewhere in Columbus. We where joined by a chap called Anthony Gilbert, who I knew at Uni, but who I haven't seen in about three years (longer maybe, I last saw him at going away drinks for his trip to Korea to teach English. He more or less went straight from there to here in the US).

Anthony has hardly changed a bit, although we are all slightly older. The difference between say 28 and 35 is however less of a big deal than say 18 to 25!

Maryland is famous for it's crabs and crab cakes. But the first course we had was something called "Poulten" (I will HAVE to check the spelling on that since I got it wrong on flickr already). This is basically chips, or fries here, covered in cheese, duck fat and some small amounts of duck meat! It's Canadian apparently - it gets cold up there so things with piles of calories are a good idea! It was very tasty, I had three goes at it.

So it was lucky that my main course wasn't too huge - a Maryland crab cake served with a vegetable patty thing. The crab cakes here are indeed very tasty, unlike anything I have had elsewhere.

Strangely I didn't have space for dessert. But one of the other great things you can get here is iced tea, unsweetened iced tea. Which given it's been very damn humid is actually really refreshing, They also do this great thing here of "freshening" your drink, so one ice tea gets refilled repeatedly. I'm going to look into it when I get home... It's been nice to find things here to drink and eat which are actually relatively healthy.

More aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaart

(Again, I'm writing this on the train to New York, so it will lacking in linkin'. We just passed through Philadelphia.)

On Thursday, my sixth day in the US, I dragged myself to the National Gallery of Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaart. I went to Art School for all of two years some time ago, which give me a special power to be able to look at art, in bulk, very quickly, and to be able to dismiss whole eras, galleries, art periods and artists! I merely wave my hand in their general direction and go "Bah! I dimiss thee!"

I did however make a point of trying to get to every room in the gallery, if briefly, just to make sure I didn't miss some hidden masterpiece. I passed very quickly through the early European art, because it's mostly icons and religious themed work that I have no time for. There were a few portraits of the Di Medici's about, just for a small dose of powerful dynasties. I probably also missed some Carrivagos or something equally important in my dashing through those parts of the gallery.

The more modern areas peaked my interest a bit more. Oh, well, after I got all excited over a room full of Rembrandt's. They have some significant Impressionist pictures, plus the odd Seurat and some great work by Gauguin and Monet.

And there in one of the galleries, I was excited to stumble across one of my favourite pictures - Manet's "The Railway", although I've heard it have other, longer titles than this. It's a simple picture of a woman sitting by a railway fence, with a book open and a small dog on her lap. Next to her stands a girl, holding the railing and looking in. The train station is concealed in a cloud of steam from the trains.

It's a fairly simple picture, but it's full of something... it's ambiguous what is going on for example. Whole books have been written about this picture... So that was a happy accident.

The gallery is in two connected buildings, with lots of the more recent - 20th century - art in the newer eastern building. Which was very poorly laid out I have to say! I found my way to a large gallery space down stairs, which was full of interesting American art - some rather good Rothko's, a Pollack, Oldenburgs, Warhols and the like. I really like Rothko, although lots of people seem unimpressed by his endless coloured rectangles.

Upstairs there was a small but interesting collection of Philip Guston paintings. I really like his work - he went from being an abstract expressionist to painting these weird landscapes and cars full of smoking klansmen. And feet, lots and lots of feet, particularly the soles of shoes. He's a bit hard to explain, but quirky in an interesting and clever way. He was friends with Pollock, but survived himself till the late seventies.

After all that art, I caught a cab out to Georgetown, which was described to me as a bit like Fitzroy, only more gentrified. Which is exactly what it turned out to be! I actually didn't stay long, since I don't really like shopping or even window shopping. I did duck into a bookshop and grab a gift for my hosts, and I might have bought an Obama tshirt in a tiny hole in the wall place. But then I hopped on a bus which (hopefully) was going somewhere useful. Actually, I'd got the hang of Washington by then, so when the bus driver told me he was heading down K street, I knew what he was talking about. Once we crossed K street and 14th, I jumped off and walked south, about five blocks back to the Mall.

The final institution I visted was the (inevitable) Smithsonian Museum of American History. Which was infested with an even higher density of screaming school groups than all the other places I'd been to. In fact the gallery had been very quiet. The school group density was slightly higher than I could cope with, so I didn't stay long in the museum. Also it was full of artefacts which were no doubt significant to American's, less so to me... Although I was amused that they have Lincoln's famous top hat!

And in fact some of the exhibitions annoyed me. There was a fairly self serving section on the American presidency, and a large section dedicated to "Protecting our freedom" - detailing all the war the US has fought over the years. I found it a bit odd - for example, what was the fall of the Berlin wall doing in there? I assume something to to with the end of the cold war... So I didn't stay long in that institution.

I propped myself up in a window in a diner/bar half way between the mall and Metro Central station and drank lots of iced tea and wrote something like seven postcards. Which tired my hand out and indeed proved yet again that my handwriting sucks!

Caught the train back to Glenmont. Later in the evening, Luke, Laura and I went out to a cinema and saw the new Star Trek movie.Which at least was nice and loud! And hence kept me awake. They showed a whole lot of previews before the film, which all blended together for me, they all looked like scenes from the same film, lots of explosions and rapid movements. Except the new Pixar film which I might actually bother to go see...

And that was my last full day in the Maryland/Baltimore/Washington area. New York is next!

Thoughts on the Washington Metro Train system

Whilst staying with my people in Maryland, I spent a lot of time using the Washington DC train system... Which impressed me somewhat, or at least stood in stark contrast to semi-functional train system back in Melbourne.

There was a few things that made it different.

Firstly, the "ticketing" system. There weren't tickets as such, I used a contact-less smart card the whole time. One recharged it with cash or with a credit card at machines at every station. You scanned it on the way in and on the way out, and it worked out how much the trip cost. Simple.

They're trying to build a similar system in Melbourne. It's two years late and seems unlikely to work as intended. It makes you wonder why they didn't just buy an existing system, rather than trying to create a new one from scratch. I mean, apart from the trams, there's nothing special about the idea of stations, trains and passengers.

Secondly, the line naming convention. Every line was assigned a colour - red, green, yellow, blue etc. - rather than a destination. So one didn't have to wonder if it was the broadmeadows line you where after or what have you. I was on the Red line, I just had to make sure I was catching the train in the right direction.

Thirdly, the trains are all in good condition, are all of one type and have hand-holds the length of the entire carriage. Compared to the four different kinds of rolling stock on the Melbourne system, including the shitty Hitachi trains, some of which have been brought out of retirement, literally from a paddock! Not to mention the state they are in or the complete lack of anything to hold on to if you are more than a metre or so from the doors.

Forth, the entire network appears to have been built around the same time, so all of the (underground) stations look the same.

Fifth, the drivers were great! I had this one laid back guy, who must have been African-American, who announced the stations and the line in a voice which sounds just like he was half asleep. You know "Next station Takoma, reeeeeeeeed line, Glenmont...."

It's going to bite having to go back to Connex. This is why I ride my bike...

One last interesting thing I noticed. Most of the buses in the inner city had bike racks on the front of them. A kind of fold-down rack with space for two bikes on it. It was a nice idea, not sure how practical it would be.