Travel Journal:

Across the USA - Georgetown


Georgetown December 2005
 

I just survived one of the mostinfuriating (and expensive) drives imaginable: Long Island to Washington, DC. In addition to relentless traffic, aggressive city drivers, and a smoggy, unpalatable landscape, it costs you nine dollars to cross the bridge from Long Island to Staten Island, another 4 and a half to use the New Jersey Turnpike, and another three to cross yet another toll bridge. It costs so much already to drive three thousand miles that it consistently irks me to have to pay TO drive. Circling DC on the “beltway” on a cold December evening, crowded by thousands of other vehicles pounding around the nation’s capital at eighty miles an hour, trying my best to memorize directions to a friend’s house as they are painstakingly recounted to me by cell phone... hellish, indeed, but Iarrived in Arlington at last, to a warm house in a darling neighborhood next to a forest and creek and running trails. It’s snowy and cold for Virginia, butafter Manhattan, almost anything is balmy. I’m surprised, even, by how warm it gets once the sun shines. I toured the Georgetown University campus as treesand awnings dripped and sidewalks filled with muddy slush. Downtown Georgetown looks almost too perfect – red brick buildings too well-kept to appear antique, expensive boutiques, pricey cafés. It’s sunny, though, and the color on color makes for a pleasant stroll. I’m with several friends who are nursing students at Georgetown. I debate whether or not to put my woolly winter hat back on (despite the sunshine, cold bites at my temples) while one of them discusses a job opening she’s seen at a hospital in Hawaii. Sounds dreamy. Another overpriced yet delectable Dean & Deluca awaits us for lunch: chicken pesto on focaccia, hot coffee. 

 
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