Happy 4th!

Blue skies over Washington, D.C. for the 4th? When was the last time that happened? I thought it was federal law that it MUST rain for the 4th. Not so. This year was beautiful, though a tad bit warm. Dan and I had a perfect curbside spot (literally sitting on the curb) across the street from the National Archives for the parade. Of course, the best part of the parade is the military groups, including the fife and drum corps. A close second this year was a bagpipe group playing, I am not making this up, the Marine Corps Hymn (you know, from the halls of Montezuma).


After the parade and a stop at our favorite frozen yogurt spot to cool off, we spent a little time at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. This year they are featuring Mexico and the pan-Asian cultures of the U.S. So it pretty much is like being home in SoCal. But to keep the theme going we had dinner at a very good Mexican restaurant right in the neighborhood, Rosa Mexicana. See? You can get good Mexican food east of the Mississippi!

Instead of fighting the crowds on the Mall we decided to go to the roof party at our building for the fireworks and that was a great decision.

You can see the Washington Monument on the left and the tower in the center is the Old Post Office Building. After the main fireworks were over we walked to the other side of the roof - the Capital side - and watched at least 20 other displays on the horizon. There are a LOT of fireworks in the DC area! Very, very cool.

Friday is Always a Good Day

It occurred to me that my last post could have been about any place - the SAAM building is beautiful but it doesn't necessarily look uniquely like DC (at least the picture I put in).
Soooo. . . . .
See? We really are in DC!

A nice walk around the Mall late in the afternoon and a quick visit to one of my favorite gardens - right behind the Smithsonian castle. Yes, those are sego palms. I do not know how they keep them alive in the winter.




Real fun was in the evening. We got to see phenom pitcher for the Washington Nationals. We never thought we'd see a nearly sell-out crowd cheering baseball in Washington. But they certainly were.
And to really top it off, I ate a hot dog and it was everything I dreamed of. Aaaahhhh, America's pasttime.

Oh, by the way our absolute favorite form of transportation:

See? We can be green. Although it really is all about the convenience!

They're Baaaaaaack!

OK, I made a promise to certain people (they know who they are) that I would resurrect my blog once we got to DC. To myself I have promised that I would eventually update last year's entries. I have good intentions to keep both promises. We'll see.

Anyway, here we are back at the Newseum Residences on Pennsylvania Avenue across the street from the National Gallery of Art. And it feels a little strange because it feels like we were here just last week when it has actually been over nine months. We've already eaten at two of our favorite places, Jaleo's which is a tapas restaurant a couple of blocks away and Chop't which is a great salad joint across from the arena where the Caps play - again just a few blocks away. Dan has been to the office and I dropped by today to see everyone including my good friend Lisa who now works at the Foundation.

I also spent an hour or so at the National Geographic Headquarters which is just about four blocks from Dan's office where they have a great display about Leonardo daVinci. There was a great daVinci quote, "There are three classes of people: Those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see." I hope to be a person who sees this summer.

This evening we dropped by the Smithsonian American Art Museum which is very close by for "Take 5" their summer jazz concerts. They are in the courtyard of the building which a couple of years ago was covered with this amazing roof and has become one of the really spectacular indoor spaces in DC. The acoustics are wonderful. We sat and listened to a very good quintet and played cribbage. Dan won but only by two points!

Salaam

We made it! It was a twelve hour flight from New York to Abu Dhabi which is one of the emirates in the United Arab Emirates. There are seven, actually, the most famous being Dubai. However, Abu Dhabi is working hard to catch up. The others are pretty quiet. Anyway, we spent only one night here but had a bit of a chance to walk around and enjoy the sights. As you can see, it looks like a city built by the water. It's just that in this case it's a city under construction by the Arabian Gulf.

Modern Abu Dhabi is COMPLETELY under construction. Literally. The traffic is horrendous because everything is torn up. Abu Dhabi has oil but its ruler has decided that since the oil will one day be gone they need to make sure their economy is built on more. So they have decided to become more like Dubai and turn to tourism and business. That means that it is a more open society than other muslim countries. Of course, religion still plays a big role. The sheikh who runs the emirate is building a spectacular mosque which which is not yet finished but it is something to behold.

We were told that a million people can fit inside. Remember, each person doesn't get a lot of space, room to kneel to pray, shoulder to shoulder, and there are multiple levels. Apparently the Qibla in Mecca can hold more than twice that amount. Everything inside comes from Italy or as it was stated, "only the very best and that means Italy."

Then it was off to Dubai. The plan was to hire a driver and drive the hour and a half along the Gulf to the neighboring emirate. In my mind I saw this as oh so romantic because I thought it would be a small road through the desert, camels munching on whatever grass they could find. You get the picture. Wrong. The drive was over a ten lane freeway and we couldn't see the water until we got to the new harbor in Dubai which is massive (the harbor). Dan says he saw a camel but I didn't so I think he was making it up.

If Abu Dhabi is a city under construction then Dubai is a city under construction on steroids. Everything is bigger and more oppulent (therefore better to the local way of thinking) than any place else in the world. In one day we:

1. Had breakfast at the world's only 7-star hotel, the Birj al Arab (birj is arabic for tower)

(OK, this picture is from the night before when we had dinner at a lovely restaurant on the beach which had an obviously spectacular view of the Birj. I would like to say that the big white ball is the moon - wouldn't that have been something - but it was a big bubble which was being used for a private event.)

This is looking straight up the tower. Everything inside is white or gold except for the unbelievable mosaics. It is so far over-the-top it's nuts. Not well said but I actually tried to come up with something better and simply couldn't!

I know this proves me wrong, not everything is white or gold but it IS amazing!

2. Visited what was the world's largest mall (until the Japanese beat them a little while ago). To call this place a mall is a bit like calling the Pacific Ocean the "Pond." There is a fountain that is three stories tall and several hundred feet long.

In case you can't tell what those things are, they are life-sized statues of divers. There must be a hundred throughout the fountain. We are not done.



Yes, there is a HUGE aquarium which you can walk through. And yes, there are lots of sharks. But we are still not done.

The mall boasts a full-size hockey rink. Yes, these people are genius. For some reason I can't find a photo so you must simply believe me.

3. Visited the construction site of the Birj Dubai which is the world's tallest building. There is no way to capture the entire building in a single photo at least from the position we were in but I gave it a good try.

I usually don't care for super modern architecture but this building is arresting. I have to say that it is really beautiful.

4. Yes, Gracie, we went to the ski slopes:

At a different mall (I am not kidding, it's at a mall) there is an indoor ski slope. We paid our ticket price, they gave us HUGE parkas, socks and boots and we rode to the top of the lift and back down again.

The fellow I'm sitting beside is a friend who, with his wife, has lived in Dubai for two years. Like Peter, all I could do was laugh the entire way up and the entire way back down. The thing is, it was over 90 degrees outside and COLD in here. It felt sort of like you were outside. OK, no comment from you Utah people. And yes, people were skiing, snow boarding, tubing, luging (how do you spell that?) and throwing snowballs.


5. Rode the water taxis across "the creek" which is the original harbor of old Dubai. This area is predominantly Indian and Indonesian and contains old souqs (markets), buddhist temples and hindu shrines.

The boats look like they are about three hundred years old (they probably are no more than 30 or 40 years), are made of wood, use a rope for steering and cost about 30 cents to ride. Since it was Friday (the Sabbath here) everyone was out so the boats were crowded. I was the only woman riding. We passed cargo boats which do carry goods on the Gulf (think there could be smuggling?) and on which people live. No, they don't look anymore sea worthy up close.

The streets in this area are very narrow and were packed with people, mostly men. There were a few women about, all dressed in their finest saris since they were going to the shrines. We purchased frankincense and myrrh at a little spice shop that also sold almonds which the proprietor was very proud to tell me came from California.

One exceptionally beautiful place here was an old Iranian style mosque.

(I think my favorite part of this picture is the chickens!) The entire facade of this building, it is quite tall, is a beautiful mosaic. A truly lovely place on a small, dusty square, surrounded by dilapidated buildings. A total surprise.

We did all this in one day and still made it the airport to catch the flight to Kuwait.

One last comment about Dubai. The citizens of the Emirate are called emiratis. We were told that they account for about 15% of the population and they are rarely, if ever, in areas where us regular folk are found. Seriously, they remain in closed neighborhoods. Even my Kuwaiti friends say this is true. That's us, the rabble.

New York, New York!

OK, it isn't a great photo but you get the idea. This is from our hotel room on the 48th floor, overlooking Times Square. The thing is, our room had windows on three sides so in the morning this is what we could see:

The same view south
The view north (you can see Central Park)

And the view west. If you make the picture larger you can see the USS New York which arrived in the City that morning. It's the Navy ship which contains 7.5 tons of steel from the World Trade Center towers. It doesn't look like any ship you've ever seen. The com towers mast, whatever are encased in sheets of steel so it looks very strange. There were sailors and marines all over and the entire City was excited to have them there. It was very, very cool.

Tomorrow it's off on the big trek.

Heaven, I'm In Heaven . . .

. . . and my heart beats so that I can hardly speak. Yeah, I know it's a bit lame but that is pretty much how I feel!

Friday night this is where we were:

Yes, that is in fact the F Street Entrance to the Verizon Center and obviously we are headed to a Caps game. That is Andrew H. on the left. He and Josh have been best friends since preschool. Spence came to town specifically to go to hockey games. So it was to be a great night. HOWEVER . . .


This is my ticket to the game. If you look closely, you will see that is for Section 190, Row A, seat 5. Dan and I were given tickets by friends who have season tickets through UBS. Yes, were were SITTING ON THE GLASS ! ! That made it a spectacular night! This is the view from my seat (sorry for the crummy quality, I had to use my cell phone for the picture):

The player with his back to us is Mike Knuble, new acquisition from the Flyers. The player facing is none other than the Great 8, Alex Ovechkin, the best player in the NHL. Yes, his head was slammed into the glass right in front of me! And, yes, I pounded on the glass. How can anyone not love this game? Dan and I had a ball. The boys had tickets up in the nose bleed seats so we spent a fair amount of time looking for them and waving like lunatics.

I AM NOT DONE YET ! !

Twenty-four hours later (that would be tonight) Dan and I were at:

For those unfamiliar with the fountain, it is on the river terrace at The Kennedy Center where we went to see the opera Ariadne auf Naxos by Richard Strauss. I know that I look in distress but I am actually trying to appear sophisticated which is remarkably painful for me. I bought tickets at the last minute thinking that I was buying seats on the far side. We ended up second row center. I know those aren't supposed to be great seats but we loved them. Three very good sopranos, one of whom was actually excellent and one amazing. Unfortunate tenor. It happens. Poor guy wasn't even the understudy but got thrown into the role tonight for some reason and just couldn't handle it. But the rest were quite good and the production was great. I still struggle with German opera but I'm trying to learn.

So, that's the perfect weekend for me, front row seats at hockey and nearly front row seats at the opera. It doesn't get much better than that.

Escape From Alcatraz? No, Just From Florida

OK, maybe that's overstating it just a little bit but I REALLY do not like Florida. I never have. We spent two days in West Palm Beach visiting a close friend and I must admit that every time I am in southern Florida it is reconfirmed to me just how much I dislike it. In fact, I played a little game with myself while flying out of Ft. Lauderdale: "What Horrible Place Would I Rather Live In BEFORE Willingly Moving To Florida?" My answers:

1. St. George, Utah (sorry Lori)

2. Phoenix, Arizona

3. Flint, Michigan (I probably would put Detroit lower than Florida but since I've never been there I don't really know)

4. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

5. Buffalo, New York (Upstate New York is gorgeous, it's just colder than the dark side of the moon)

Anyway, we made it out alive and are now enjoying Washington, D.C. in my favorite time of year, autumn.

This is looking over the Potomac River from a foot bridge that crosses to Roosevelt Island. That's Georgetown in the distance, the spires of the University on the left and the towers of the National Cathedral on the right.

All I can say is that it is just a little cool and it smells the way autumn should!