Besides binging on art museums, the objective of this trip is also to experience some of the more “iconic” pieces of American life.
While in DC, this meant sampling one of the local delicacies, the Half Smoke at Ben’s on U Street. the Half Smoke is a special sausage made of half beef and half pork meat, with a flavour halfway between smoked sausage and a regular hot dog (hence the name).
This DC delicacy is then smothered in chilli sauce and onions (hope you don’t mind, but I skipped the mustard, which is not something I particularly like). This is a famous and special place for the DC community, with many celebrities among its regulars. For instance, Barack Obama dined here the night before his first inauguration as President in 2009. To be honest, I was expecting a bit more punch from the chilli sauce, but all in all it was a pretty decent hot dog.
Yesterday night I also decided it was time to check out the local music scene and went to a former funeral parlor turned rock venue, the Rock&Roll Hotel, to check out Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, which put up a pretty good show. The real treat was however the opening act, Laura Gibson, a very talented singer-songwriter whose latest work is called after the long-distance train connecting Chicago to Seattle, the Empire Builder.
Considering I’ll be travelling on another epic long-distance route from Chicago to San Francisco (the California Zephyr) in a week, this was quite a nice touch (a sign maybe? 🙂 ).
This last day in DC was also spent in 2 other “symbols” of American culture. The first was the Laundromat (for the record, I did not strip down to my underwear to wash the clothes I had on me like in a famous Levi’s commercial… I doubt the old ladies in the Laundromat would have appreciated 🙂 ).
After taking care of the important task of having clean underwear, I took a break from the streak of art museums of the last week and headed for the Smithsonian institute, checking out first their Air & Space Museum (where I could meet face to face many historic aircrafts, including Lindbergh’s “Spirit of St. Louis”) and finishing it off with some old bones at the Natural History Museum.
Tomorrow, it’s time to make my way west. Next stop: Cleveland!