What We Loved This Week: Washington, D.C.‘s Inaugural Spirit, Dinosaurs and More

Travel Blog  •  World Hum  •  01.16.09 | 6:42 PM ET

Obama bleachers Washington DCBleachers on Pennsylvania Ave. by Michael Yessis

Our contributors share a favorite travel-related experience from the past seven days.

Michael Yessis
I spent a frigid morning in Washington, D.C., walking up and down Pennsylvania Avenue. I brought my camera and stayed warm enough to snap some shots before the masses fill the bleachers lining the street. More images to come tomorrow in a slideshow. 

Jenna Schnuer
While procrastinating this week, I became obsessed with this photo gallery of close-up images of sand from the book, A Grain of Sand. From now on, shell-collecting is out. I’m toting sand home. Then I’ll just need to pick up a high-powered microscope. I guess I’ll buy the book and stick with the shells.

Valerie Conners
Pre-Inauguration 2009. I happened to be in Washington, D.C., this week and spent my time there wearing a perma-grin as I took in the palpable energy coursing through the city right now. Trip highlights include my commemorative Metro card (“Celebrating the Inauguration of Barack Obama, 44th President of the United States”), and riding the Acela with Joe Biden and his flock of Secret Service men. The future veep, I might note, does not ride first class. Love it.

Sophia Dembling
I didn’t know Texas had a state dinosaur, but it seems we do. Right now, it’s the pleurocoleus, but that critter might be stripped of the honor because some bones found in Glen Rose, Texas, in 1997 were identified by an SMU student as an entirely new species, a paluxysaurus. This week, Rep. Charlie Geren of Fort Worth submitted a bill that would give ol’ paluxy his due. The bones will be displayed in the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History when it opens its new facility this fall. Pleurocoleus, I hardly knew ya.

Eva Holland
I picked up a copy of The Best of Granta Travel at a second-hand shop awhile back, and this week I’ve been enjoying digging into it. More specifically, I absolutely loved reading Todd McEwen’s “They Tell Me You Are Big,” a short essay about an “under-nourished New York worrier” on a stop-over in Chicago, aka Big People Land. I couldn’t find it online, but it’s been anthologized a few times; keep an eye out for it.

Emma Jacobs
I’m newly in love with Amanda Petrusich’s still relatively new and fantastic road-trip book, It Still Moves: Lost Songs, Lost Highways, and the Search for the Next American Music, which I finally finished this week. 

Jim Benning
Last Chance Harvey star Dustin Hoffman cracked me up. In one of those “Proust Questionnaire” interviews in the February Vanity Fair, he was asked what he most values in friends. His reply: “Private planes.”

Tags: Barack Obama, Movies, Shameless Self-Promotion, Travel Photography, Travel Writing, North America, United States, Texas, Washington, D.C., News and Briefs


1 Comment for What We Loved This Week: Washington, D.C.‘s Inaugural Spirit, Dinosaurs and More

Grizzly Bear Mom 01.17.09 | 5:03 PM ET

The future VEEP does too ride first class.  When he is late for the train, he calls Union Station and all 200 people on the train wait for him to reach the station.  Communites will be happy when he moves to DC>

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