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Tourism in D.C.
Asking hawks to
“play nice” and other tidbits
By Susan Olling
The Weed Festival’s over for another year. The trees have been
leafed out for a few weeks, but tourists persist in asking the
whereabouts of those flowers. They seem most surprised that those
dratted trees aren’t in bloom for very long.
School groups are finally arriving in their usual droves. A
couple of recent groups of urchins were from Colorado. Lots of
comments about how they were going back to snow.
I’ve always wondered about those who say the economy’s ailing. If
so, why do so many school groups still manage to make it to D.C.?
Every year?
Thank you to the tourists who continue to provide a wonderful source of
humor as well as outstanding fashion faux pas.
Before the pool at the World War Two Memorial was drained last winter,
a ten-year-old tried to test the ice. Not frozen solid (no
surprise). Fortunately, the pool’s not deep; but the little dear
still got an unpleasant surprise.
Mr. History was working one drizzly evening when a tourist commented
about him being out in bad weather. Mr. History replied that it
“sure beat sitting at a desk all day”.
The area around the memorials is a good habitat for red tailed
hawks. It can happen that these raptors catch squirrels or other
prey while humans are about. Unfortunately, too many tourists are
divorced from nature. They seem to have a problem with the hawk
doing what a hawk does and mentions it to a park ranger. Not sure
what the ranger’s supposed to do. Perhaps ask the hawk to play
nice?
One of my favorite tourist/school group stories occurred some years
ago. We were patiently waiting in line at Mount Vernon for a tour
of the Mansion. In April. I know, a big mistake. In
front of us were three teenaged girls and a chaperone. They were
easy enough to ignore. Until we got to the second floor of the
house. When the lovely volunteer talked about the Lafayette
bedroom, one of the teenaged geniuses asked the adult “Wasn’t he that
dude?” That did it. I turned to Mr. History and said that
the Marquis de Lafayette would forever be “that dude” whenever I read
about the American Revolution.
Another vintage tourist-being-a-tourist story involved an older woman
who was looking for a good Chinese restaurant in D.C. One in
Chinatown was suggested which not only had great food, but the building
had been Mary Surratt’s boarding house. Madam Chinese food went
to the bottom of the tourist dung heap when she mentioned that the
Chinatown in D.C. wasn’t at all like the Chinatown where she was from,
San Francisco. I sucked the word balloon back down in my
head.
Mr. History has his “Fashion Statement of the Night”. Sometimes
more than one. A recent specimen of sartorial splendor was
wearing a lime green shirt, cinnamon colored shorts, fire engine red
socks, and orange shoes. The fashion police must have been
somewhere else to miss this vision. And gentlemen, you’re not the
only ones who apparently forget about checking the mirror before you
leave that hotel room. One evening, an adult female was seen
wearing a blue, dotted shirt and blue, checked pants. Choose one
geometric shape or the other, dear. By the way, the best put
together tourists are the Honor Flight groups and the tiny visitors.
The National Mall and Memorial Parks has, in recent years, hired
seasonal park rangers during the busy months. One of these
rangers is a medically-retired veteran of the wars in southwest
Asia. On his last night at work last fall, Mr. Seasonal
Ranger asked Mr. History whether tourists had been more demanding,
disrespectful, and obnoxious than the previous season. Or was it
his imagination? My answers (and I wasn’t there) were yes
to all three adjectives, and no, it wasn’t your imagination, kid.
Last fall, I went to Gettysburg, PA. In planning to visit the
national cemetery, I printed off the walking tour information
from the National Park Service web site. There were two
paragraphs about cemetery behavior that caught my attention. The
first asked that visitors show respect for the dead and not climb or
sit on graves, monuments, markers, or cannons and not to run or shout
in the cemetery. Also that adults should supervise the children
in their groups. The second paragraph asked that if visitors left
the paved walkways, they not step on the individual grave stones.
Again, out of respect for the dead. Folks, a cemetery is not a
theme park. Please behave accordingly.
My trip to Williamsburg in a couple of weeks should yield more touristy
humor. They’re as entertaining down there as the tourists who
come to D.C. Can’t wait.
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