Washington, D.C. 2019

Do we want to try and go on a White House tour? I asked.

Not during this administration, my mother replied.

So here we finally are, gazing across at the White House and it looks… diminished by the last four years.

Well, there it is. I shrug and pose for a desultory photo as close as the barricades will allow, and we hop across to the guardhouse near the signpost that says 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and watch as a few cars pass through the gates.

Yesterday we had crossed the Potomac to Arlington National Cemetery and had been lucky enough to catch the Changing of the Guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier after we had visited the Kennedys’ grave site and wandered across a plaque to the American defenders of Bataan and Corregidor.

We had taken a nighttime walk around the National Mall, from the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument, stopping by the MLK Monument and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. We’d even made it to the Library of Congress. This was the well-trodden tourist path through the nation’s capital – somber, stately, gleaming cold.

We’d had dinner in Georgetown – because I was thinking about one of my favourite books, Washington Goes To War by David Brinkley, and I thought I remembered a description in there about fried chicken and greens, and a bit about wartime chicken rations being served at diplomatic functions, or something like it, fried chicken was very much on my mind that evening, and the version at Farmers Fishers Bakers, with grits and green peas, satisfied.

“Honey, we don’t like the Yankees around here,” the lady at reception greets me the next morning. Oh, right. The Astros had taken the lead in last night’s game (but the hometown Nationals would go on to win the World Series a few nights later) and here I was, oblivious with a black Yankees cap on.

From the corner of Bataan Street and Rhode Island we spy the Philippine Embassy (looking a little less glitzy than the NYC consulate on Fifth Avenue), and pass by the National Geographic Museum and the Defenders of Wildlife (a name that definitely catches my attention), before we reach Lafayette Square and the White House, which really is so underwhelming – aliens blew this up? – that for a moment I consider whether we’d have been better off going to gawk at Foggy Bottom instead.

We turn onto Constitution Ave and are drawn into the larger-than-life glories of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, with a megalodon hovering over our heads at lunch, and dinosaurs and meteorites and the Hope Diamond, a jewel that had fascinated me ever since Michelle Pfeiffer wore it in Life magazine, and would later read about again in Washington Goes To War. We spent so much time there we didn’t make it to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, which I was determined to visit even if the Star Trek exhibit was currently closed, but Mom promised her little space geek that we would be back tomorrow. So we moseyed around the Smithsonian Castle and Union Square and took our Capitol selfies before heading back round the National Mall again for some ice cream while I stealthily eyed the lawyer types out for a jog.

We meet my cousin after work, and she takes us to a neighbourhood Peruvian gem called El Chalan. I order the lomo saltado and a pisco sour that packs a wallop.

Our last morning in D.C. has us appreciating the Brutalist architecture of the metro stations, and ambling around the calming US Botanic Gardens – the rose garden was my favourite – before hitting up the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum for the ultimate nerd outing. (Guess who bought the T-shirt? And a NASA key ring?)

We stop by Panera for lunch and I remember to get some takeaway for the plane upon advice of a friend who once brought cake in her handbag. Little did I know how prescient this would be!

Mom and I part ways at Reagan National; I was off to see my high school friends in Seattle, and she was off with her high school friends to Florida. I was prepared for a TSA nightmare and / racists, drama over pets and emotional-support animals, or any of the other airport horror stories that make the news, but it was suspiciously calm and civilized so when I boarded the Alaska Airlines flight I thought I was in for an uneventful cross-country trip.

Reader, I was not, but my Panera takeaway and a wayward pack of gummy dinosaurs from the Smithsonian gift shop would save me.