In Washington D.C. and Paris, Seduced by a Night View
Travel Blog • Julia Ross • 08.29.07 | 3:57 PM ET
Photo by Two recent stories on Paris and Washington D.C. after dark are a good reminder that taking in cityscapes by night can yield an entirely different travel experience than tromping around at mid-day. A Washington Post article and slide show on the patchwork system used to illuminate the monuments lining the National Mall nicely conveys the city’s nocturnal alter-ego, while a New York Times piece on ascending the Eiffel Tower at night actually made me want to brave the interminable line to try it.
Of the nation’s capital, the Post’s Philip Kennicott writes: “At night, there is a second city that emerges in Washington, more beautiful and more intelligible than the city by day. The great monuments on the Mall glow a warm white, the grass and trees that surround them sink into inky darkness, and the city itself seems larger, more dramatic and more logically laid out.”
As someone who has spent most of her life in Washington, I heartily agree. Kennicott’s piece, in fact, triggered a vivid memory of my first glimpse of D.C., which came on a steamy, 1970s August night, courtesy of a family friend’s convertible. My parents had just packed up and moved the five of us from the Midwest, and I was scared to death at the prospect of starting third grade in foreign terrain.
I remember charging up the steps of a shimmering Lincoln Memorial, awestruck by the fatherly, outsized presence of Lincoln himself. I turned to catch the lights dancing off the Reflecting Pool and thought: This place might not be so bad after all.