Mount Vernon and the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception

On Sunday, October 5, 2014, we got up at 6:10 a.m. and were out the door around an hour later.  We mentioned to the people at the hotel desk that we’d be out all day and, without prompting, they gave us vouchers for free glasses of wine, since we wouldn’t be there for the wine hour in the lobby from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m.  We were really pleased with the service at Hotel Rouge.

We walked down to the Farragut North Metro station, on the way passing the Mayflower Hotel, where Mary Joy and her high school classmates had stayed in 1971 (?).  It and the neighborhood were much nicer-looking than she remembered them to have been 43 years ago.  We used our Smartrip cards to take the Red Line for three stops, then exited at Gallery Place-Chinatown and went downstairs to the Green Line.  We took that to Waterfront and walked three blocks, through a recently-developed and newly-developing area, by the Arena Stage theater, down to the Spirit Cruises dock, where we picked up our tickets and, at 8:15, went aboard the Spirit of Mount Vernon.

We got seats at a table on the upper, open deck.  It was cold—temperature in the low forties—and we had several layers of sweaters on.  A little after 8:30, the ship’s horn blew several blasts and we headed down the Washington Channel toward the Potomac River.  Around 10:00, after a pleasant, though cold, cruise with live narration as to what we were passing, we arrived at the wharf for Mount Vernon.

As we left the boat we were handed tickets with the time 10:35.  That was when we could start standing in line to enter the house.  We walked up the hill through the woods, past George Washington’s tomb, where several elderly military veterans were addressing a small crowd, telling when and where they had served.  A man dressed in an 18^th-century soldier’s uniform started playing a fife as we continued up the hill, past a cornfield and some fenced-in cattle of what looked like an antiquated breed—first the Army Hymn (“As the Caissons Go Rolling Along”), then the Navy Hymn (“Anchors Away”), then the Marine Hymn (“From the Halls of Montezuma”), then finally the Air Force Hymn (“Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder”).  Then we were across the Bowling Green, Mount Vernon’s west lawn, from Washington’s house.  He had inherited the original house and a great deal of land from his older half-brother, Lawrence Washington, in the 1750s.  We were five minutes early to get in line, so we took a quick look at the Upper Garden, with its tubbed exotics (kept in a heated greenhouse during the winter), then were ready to wend our way, past the “necessary” (outhouse) designed by Washington himself, up to the house.

Mount Vernon, we learned, was and is sided not in stone, but “rusticated” wood—made to look like stone, by means of grooves and a coating of sand.  Starting in 1759, Washington expanded his brother’s small house so that while it is still not large by modern standards, and certainly no palace, it was the comfortable abode of a wealthy gentleman farmer, who, at his death in 1799, operated several farms, a grist mill and a profitable distillery, with the labor of over 300 slaves.

As the line snaked its way through the house, each room had its own docent, who kept repeating the same information as new people arrived.  You’d think that that would get tiresome to them very quickly.  I assume that they must have switched rooms pretty often.

We wandered around the grounds and various outbuildings, and didn’t have time to see the museum or the orientation films before we had lunch (good) at the Mount Vernon Inn, with its pseudo-colonial atmosphere.  Then we went through the gift shop (my credit card did not escape unscathed) and had to hurry back to Spirit of Mount Vernon before it started its return trip at 1:30.
down to the landing to board the

There was no narration on the way back, but the temperature had now reached a one-sweater level, so it was pleasant to sit in the sun up on the top deck.  On arrival, we asked one of the employees about a seafood restaurant recommended by one of our relatives, but, alas, it had succumbed to the wholesale redevelopment of the waterfront.

We went back to the Metro station, caught the Green Line back to Gallery Place-Chinatown, but caught the Red Line going east, not west.  We almost got on a wrong train, since the map in the station showed one stop as “New York Avenue” instead of the “NoMa-Gallaudet” that showed on the internet and paper maps and on the trains themselves. 

As we approached the CUA (Catholic University of America) station, we could see, towering above everything, the largest Catholic church in North America, the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.  Our
Cathedral of Saint Paul is big, holding around 3000 worshipers, but the National Shrine can contain 7000.

We got off the train and crossed the CUA campus to this impressive church.  I’ll have to admit that I was not expecting to like it.  Last year at this time, we went to La Crosse, Wisconsin, where we visited the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which is an intentionally retro statement, a 1950s church built in the twenty-first century, proclaiming the superiority of the pre-Vatican II Church.  The difference was that the Immaculate Conception Shrine was innocently retro, a 1950s church built in the 1950s (and earlier), with some interesting modernistic art and stained glass.

High above the apse was a huge modern version of the Pantocrator, Christ as ruler in judgment of the world.  This is not the warm, fuzzy Jesus.  He is clearly ticked off.  Blond and built like a football player (he must have been working in the weight room), he spreads his arms with the wounded hands held up against us, his brows arched in anger, as if to say, "Stop right there, miscreant!  Come no closer!  You're in real trouble!"

But it's a beautiful church.  The many side altars are all dedicated to Mary under her various aspects, as venerated by the various nations of the world.  We wandered around until the 4:30 mass was ready to begin.

Again, we were impressed.  The liturgy and music, even with only an organist and cantor, were wonderful. 

After mass, we took the Red Line back to Dupont Circle, where we browsed some at Kramerbooks and then had dinner at the attached restaurant, Afterwords, which was strongly recommended in Lonely Planet.  Again, Lonely Planet hit the mark.  I had the chicken pot pie, which was by far the best I’ve ever had—how was it possible to cook the vegetables perfectly, not crunchy and not mushy, but to the exact right consistency?  Mary Joy had a wonderful crab cake pasta.
Then we walked back to the hotel and used our wine vouchers for glasses of chardonnay in the bar.  And so, to bed.