I took the Chinatown bus from New York to D.C. (very cheep -- $35 round trip) The Chinatown bus is, obviously, in Chinatown. But I'm not sure Chinatown is really part of New York. As I walked the streets from the subway, which is still fairly western, heading towards the bus, I moved farther and farther from the (relatively) familiar to the strange and exotic! The closer I got to the bus "station" the more the signs were only in Chinese; the more the people only spoke Chinese; the more strange roots and herbs and fish and things I couldn't even guess at sat in bins on the street. It didn't even smell the same! Waiting in line to board the bus, the man next to me said, "I feel like I am in Beijing." Me too. It made me question this whole "round the world" thing! It is a bit intimidating to be hungry and see nothing that looks like "food." On the other hand, Chinatown in D.C. is totally different! It is about a block long, and blends in well with the rest of the city, except for the huge, shiny arch across the street (flanked on one side by the subway and on the other by a CVS.) A bit of a let down actually after being in China just a few hours ago!
In D.C. I stayed with my friend Tammy. We had a great time wandering around the Renaissance Fair. I got to see "real" jousting -- with lances splintering from the force of impact and everything! The force was so great that one man was knocked off his horse and had to wait for his squires to help him up! I was rooting for the one woman knight. She came in 10 of 10, but at least she was there! We also got to see Hack and Slash, a comic sword fighting duo, who were very funny (Women love Puppies, says Hack (or was it Slash?) holding up an imaginary puppy. They 
will forgive anything if you have a puppy. If I have a puppy in one hand, and in the other hand I have a box of chocolates, and in the other hand I have a bunch of flowers, how many of you would choose the puppy? See, half of you go for the puppy even though I have three hands!) We also got to see a man juggling a running chain saw (very impressive, though not quite in keeping with the Renaissance theme)! My favorite, though, was the sword swallower, Johnny Fox. (That's a stage name of course, his real name is John Fox. -- OK, that might have been funnier in person.) His sense of humor was very dry. (You should see your faces! he said, after pulling a huge (at least two-foot long) sharp, wiggly sword out of his mouth!) That was one of the most impressive swords, that and the huge, industrial size, cooking spoon and an equally huge (again 2-foot long) screwdriver! He also stuck a 3-inch nail up his nose (!) and did the cups and balls trick, making apples appear under the cups! (If you ever see someone winning at cups and balls, he warned, they are working with the the person moving the cups!) I was enraptured -- it's like science: cool and disgusting at the same time!
I also got to see Bethany, which was great! She and I had a very pleasant time wandering around the Botanic Gardens. I learned that the flowers of a chocolate tree (OK, cacao tree, for those that want to be precise) come out of the bark of the trunk! There was a tree in the garden (about 1-foot DBH (diameter at breast height) -- so a mature tree) with flowers about a foot off the ground! very cool, but very strange! After the Botanic Gardens, we walked over to the Natural History Museum. Spectacular geology exhibit! I highly recommend it to those of you visiting the east. We got into conversations with other science nerds about the HUGE super volcano that sits under Yellowstone National Park and is due to erupt any time now (it erupts about every 600,000 years and its been about 600,000 years -- as an F.Y.I. last time it went, it dropped about a foot of ash on Montana!)All in all, my visit to D.C. was great, but I seem to be mentioning the most disturbing parts, so, to round things out, I will end on the very first disturbing thing that happened -- the haunted bowl of soup. Tammy and I sat down to dinner one night and the waitress put a bowl of soup in front of Tammy and walked away. Just as Tammy was about to dig in, the bowl moved, sliding, on its own, about three inches across the table. We look at each other and then back at the bowl. Which moved again! Another three inches! At which point we both burst out laughing hysterically! I took the bowl and started eating it, and... you guessed it, it moved again!
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