22 May 2015
Postcard from Washington
September, 2011
There is one all-business class airline that has not yet gone bust, but it may only be a question of time. Open Skies operates a daily flight in the cigar-tube 757 from Paris Orly to Washington Dulles. Apart from the fact that Orly makes Gatwick South Terminal seem exciting and modern, the Open Skies equipment is BA cast-off, with business seats from 15 years ago and previous generation beds. The in-flight entertainment has been removed because DAT tapes are no longer made, nor brick-sized displays with flickering colour and crackly sound. The food was one of those unfortunate combinations of French and English (think sandwiches made of French supermarket sliced bread smeared with English margarine) and the ground staff (once they turned up) had evidently been trained by a Parisian café garçon on a bad day.
We loved it. We were able to fly from Annecy – recently upgraded from the status of aerodrome to airport perhaps because it now has more than 5 scheduled flights a week – leaving home at 05:00 for a flight at 06:10, parked for free and arrived so early in the terminal we had to turn the lights on. The Open Skies flight was great because it was empty (and unlike the ground staff, the flight attendants were charming) and it all felt delightfully amateurish: the ground staff arrived with a bowl of flowers for the check-in desk; there were duvets, but to lie on rather than as a cover because the seats were so hard; the wines were chosen because they were good, rather than cheap and there was no map, electronic or otherwise. And we were issued with portable movie-players which worked quite well, even if there were cables everywhere. It was a welcome change from a normal flight!
We loved it. We were able to fly from Annecy – recently upgraded from the status of aerodrome to airport perhaps because it now has more than 5 scheduled flights a week – leaving home at 05:00 for a flight at 06:10, parked for free and arrived so early in the terminal we had to turn the lights on. The Open Skies flight was great because it was empty (and unlike the ground staff, the flight attendants were charming) and it all felt delightfully amateurish: the ground staff arrived with a bowl of flowers for the check-in desk; there were duvets, but to lie on rather than as a cover because the seats were so hard; the wines were chosen because they were good, rather than cheap and there was no map, electronic or otherwise. And we were issued with portable movie-players which worked quite well, even if there were cables everywhere. It was a welcome change from a normal flight!
We had not reckoned with Irene. From my experience of the 1989 California earthquake (slogan: “6.9 in ’89”), I remember the Americans do disasters and emergencies rather well. We fully expected to see the airport close behind us (it did) and to watch the hurricane on an infinite CNN loop while sipping a Martini that my mother would have been proud of (we did). There was a lot of rain, leaves were blown off and the occasional tree brought down, but mostly we benefitted from the empty restaurants and streets; Washington in general remained open for business. We enjoyed watching on TV Michele Bachmann – a Presidential candidate who makes Sarah Palin look like a socialist – saying that the earthquake and hurricane were signs of God’s wrath at Obama’s economic policies (perhaps “enjoyed” is not the right word, “scared” might be better).
The Washington memorials are very impressive, even if we did not find the Albanian Campaign memorial from Wag the Dog. The Lincoln, Vietnam, World War II and especially the Korea memorials are each very impressive in their own ways. We also visited the Martin Luther King memorial, which was due to be inaugurated two days later by Obama and, carved as it is from a piece of rock not much smaller than the White Cliffs of Dover, it must have been built with a pre-crisis level budget.
Perhaps exaggerated by Irene, our feeling is that DC is as serene as New York is frenetic. There is something almost communist-era about a city full of politicians and civil servants working in enormously grand buildings on wide boulevards, with relatively little traffic and lots of police hanging around. The only visible sign of raw capitalism may have been the largish, and no doubt growing population of homeless people and street beggars.
The well-stocked museums and galleries, all seemingly financed by benefactors with middle initials (“the John D. Smith Collection”) would probably take longer to visit in full than the year it took Maniuszka to visit all of London’s sites. We managed the museum of American History (bigger than a sceptical Brit might imagine), the International Spy Museum (in Katie’s honour) and the National Gallery of Art (with its extensive Impressionist collection). To see as much as possible in our four short days, we opted to follow George and Lise’s lead of mechanised transport by taking a City tour on a Segway (and yes, we do have photos). They are surprisingly easy to ride, steer and brake, but you have to get used to the stares and not be tempted to step off, as the Segway just keeps going if you do. One machine ended up in the river on a previous tour, allegedly.
We went round Capitol Hill and saw the outside of many of the Smithsonian museums and galleries and Washington at sunset. One museum apparently has the Magna Carta on display, but with Pamela mumbling “probably a photocopy” under her breadth, we were able to confirm that it is not in fact the original.
Americans do understand about shop sales, and with the dollar at such a low exchange rate even compared with the pound, shopping was a delight. Wearing my sunglasses and clutching my frequent voyeur card, we lingered in Victoria’s Secret. We also bought a mug at the White House shop with the slogan “Friends don’t let friends vote Republican” for P-B when he next visits, and replaced my aging Tumi briefcase with a new one at a price so low, it almost seemed reasonable.
Our hotel was opposite George Washington University and we arrived the weekend before classes started. We saw the usual Fresher behaviour: clucking mothers, daughters wearing the briefest of hot pants, visible excitement at the newness of everything, as well as some tears and the odd panic attack. Over a period of a couple of days, the new students migrated their food from the posh restaurants with their parents to the Subways, Chinese take-aways and cheap cafés of student life. Neighbouring Georgetown also has a famous University, with more of a village atmosphere: lots of cafés, restaurants and shops, as well as an impressive waterfront on the Potomac river. It left us with the impression of being a nice place to live.
On our last day we visited Mount Vernon, the home of George Washington. I was rather expecting the house to be quite grand, perhaps Versailles with a touch of bling. In fact it is quite a modest farmhouse, even if the decoration, furniture and other objects are quite striking. It benefitted from being one of the few buildings the British did not burn down in the early days of building that Special Relationship we have with the US.
After 4 days in DC, our time was done so we collected our hire car from Avis for the working part of the holiday. We were upgraded in all respects except one – they did not provide the GPS SatNav we had booked – apparently Irene had caused a run of them. When you are fleeing town, I suppose you need to know how to get out. As we protested, they asked where we were headed. “The middle of nowhere in West Virginia”, I replied. “We don’t have a map for that address, Sir. Try the National Geographic store opposite”. Gritting our teeth and planning long grumbling letters to the CEO of Avis, we bought the only map National Geographic had of West Virginia. It was called the “Adventure Map” and, if we had understood WVA correctly from Dave Darsch’s description of gun-toting rednecks, that seemed a most appropriate word. Perhaps we should have booked a pickup, complete with gun rack.
# posted by DavidF @ 15:52 
