Crazy on the Outside

In the past few days, I've begun exploring my new home. One of the most striking things I've noticed is that New Yorkers seem incapable of silent displeasure. If a New Yorker is angry or annoyed you are going to know it. For example, on Wednesday I witnessed an older woman tell a bus driver to drop dead for refusing to take pennies as payment. Later, during my entrapment in the bowels of the F train tunnels in Queens, a young man got up and started pacing and screaming about how much he wanted to get home and how nobody better mess with him on his way to the bus. Then of course there's the honking, so oft accompanied by yelling, that is so integral to the driving experience in NYC. This is a city of 9 million people who wear their anger on their sleeves (they all look like this guy).

Coming from DC where talking on public transit is reserved for naive tourists and obnoxious teenagers, I'm a bit taken aback. Of course, people get angry everywhere but I think that in NYC people are a little bit closer to their public outburst threshold than they are in other cities. I wonder if I am I going to turn into a screamer who cannot control her rage? Until I become one of these crazy, angry, self-talking New Yorkers, I miss the relatively quiet citizenry of DC.

Things to do in DC if you're bored

The past few months I've been running around trying to do some cool (and cheap) things in and around DC before I have to relocate. Below is a selection of some of the highlights in this town.

Neighborhood Heritage Trails
Cultural tourism DC created a series of self-guided tours throughout various nabes in DC. I've been on 4 of these trails, and some are really sucky (NEVER go to SW DC if you can help it, it looks like a concrete truck threw up). However, some are really cool. The best one I've been on so far is the tour through the Capitol Hill area near the Marine barracks. You get to see where John Phillip Sousa was born! I guess that doesn't sound that exciting in print.

George Washington Crap
I don't know if you've ever noticed this or not, but the USA is pretty much obsessed with George Washington. I don't know enough about history to either agree or disagree with that sentiment, but I have been to a lot of the things around this area that celebrate ol' G-dubs. First and foremost, I used to give tours of the Capitol where they have the Apotheosis of Washington -- a painting depicting Washington's ascent to heaven. I think it's a creepy painting that makes George look like a lady. Just down the street is the Washington Monument. It's pretty tall, but it's not that great. It took a long time to get to the top, and when I finally got there I was surrounded by children and fat people. It was like my nightmare. If you want a view of DC from above, you should probably either just look out the window on flights to and from National, or go to the top of the .

The best GW place in this area is his home in Virginia, Mount Vernon. There have been a lot of changes since you last visited (elementary school?). Most notably, they have an interactive movie experience where you sit in a theatre and they shake your seat and then throw fake snow at you to simulate the crossing of the Delaware. It's kind of like being to Disney world, but with much shorter lines and slightly more attempts to shrug off slave ownership. Also, they have an old-timey distillery.

Gardens
There's a lot of stuff growing in DC, and most of it is pretty. Obviously there are the Cherry Blossoms around the Tidal Basin, as feted by the Cherry Blossom Festival. But there's also the National Arboretum, which has beautiful Azaleas. They also have an herb garden and a bunch of columns in the middle of a field -- can't go wrong there! There's also the conservatory at theBotanical Gardens. This place is awesome because you can visit in the middle of winter and they will still have beautiful orchids. You can also see that gross-ass flower that smells like a corpse and looks like the Audrey II's reproductive organs.

However, my absolute favorite gardens in DC can be found at the Franciscan Monastery in NE near Brookland. The gardens outside the monastery may lack a variety of foliage, however, they are definitely more quiet and serene than the other gardens. No kids or tourists (or anyone for that matter) there. As an added bonus, you can take a tour of the church at the monastery and view recreations of the Holy Land sites and the catacombs in Rome. Down in the catacombs you can see the bones of St. Innocence and mosaics of skeletons. It's definitely a unique experience. By "unique" I mean curious and at times downright eerie for someone who was not raised in a faith advocating the worship of Saints let alone their body parts.