First of all, I apologize for posting this one late. This post is about Wednesday, May 27th. I just didn't have time to write when we got home from Murphy's that night, and we've been on the road all day today (Thursday the 28th).
Today we took a break from the road and hung out with Jackson in Washington all day. I woke up to a swift kick in the ribs from Jackson after an envigorating night of rest in my sleeping bag on the floor, and soon afterward we scooted on over to Old Town Alexandria for lunch. From there we caught the Metro over to the National Mall for a day of cliche tourist activities.
Jackson first directed us to the Smithsonian castle, where we promptly skipped over all the stupid antiques and artifacts as we made our way back to the crown jewel of the city: the football that was used in the '81 Iron Bowl and presented to Coach Paul W."Bear" Bryant as his record-shattering 315th career win, a record he held on to posthumously for nearly 20 years. We then spent hours scouring the place for some Auburn memoribilia, but in the end we came up emptyhanded. Hayden was disappointed to say the least, but he did assure us that their current recruiting class is full of "high character" guys, and that Gene Chizik doesn't care about accolades or star-gazing anyway.
Anyway, back to the trip. Our next stop was the National
Holocaust Museum. Jackson got us in with military passes so we got to skip the lines which saved a lot of time. The museum itself was set up well and contained tons of information--more than we could feasibly take in in just a few hours. After walking through the exhibit we went over across the Mall to the Smithsonian American History Museum. Again, we didn't really have enough time to really get
everything possible out of this one.
The highlights here included Kermit the frog, Oscar the Grouch, the Star-Spangled Banner thatinspired Francis Scott Key to write our national anthem, and--for Hayden--the C3PO costume from Return of the Jedi. After the museums we walked over to the White House and took a bunch of super sweet pix in front of it. I wanted to get one of the rooftop snipers, but they proved too elusive for me. We ate a nice little dinner at Hawk and Dove, which has allegedly been the site of a good bit of Congressional/Staffer extracurricular fraternization. After dinner on the way back to Plaza del Jackson, we stopped by the Pentagon 9/11 memorial. It was really nice and well done.
Once we got back to the Plaza, we cleaned up before taking a cab over to Murphy's Irish Pub in Old Town. It's a quaint little Irish bar full of locals, off-duty police officers, and merrymaking young twenty-somethings. We enjoyed some pints and appetizers to the tunes of the local Irishman who was playing such Irish folk classics as "Alice," "Sweet Home Alabama," and "Freebird." Once we started with the Roll Tide Roll choruses during SHA, we quickly became the most popular people in the bar...I guess they thought meeting authentic Alabamians in an Irish pub in Virginia was pretty exotic. Either way, people started buying us rounds of pints for free, which really worked out in our favor.
Now, I would like to end this post with a G-rated rendition of the old Irish "Maid of Honor" blessing that the entertainment serenaded us with:
"This is the Maid of Honor.
I hugged her sitting,
I hugged her lying,
If she had wings, I'd hug her flying.
If she was dead and long forgotten,
I'd dig her up and hug her rotten."
Gasoline Purchased Today: 0 gallons
Sleeping Accomodations: Plaza del Jackson
Tomorrow's Destination: Either Dover, Atlantic City, or Philadelphia
Potential Stops en Route: Baltimore, Dover
Potential Problems: Grogginess
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