A Walking Tour And A Brush With Greatness

Okay, that may be exaggerating a bit, even for me...You be the judge.

Guess where H and I were this weekend. Here's a clue...


Need another one?

Ok, NOW you know...


For real...

We decided to go to DC for a night, before we had to be in Maryland on Sunday morning. I hadn't been there in a long time. I don't know Washington well at all, but I think we must have walked about 50 miles.

We stayed in Georgetown, which has a kind of Newbury/Boylston Street/Boston feel to it. I wanted to see the Jefferson Memorial, so H and I started out walking down M street, which might mean something to you Washingtonites. We kept walking and walking.

I guess we turned somewhere and smack in front of us was the Lincoln Memorial, which we stopped by to say hi to. Gosh, it's magnificent. I could have stared into his face forever.



Then we walked through the Mall and kept trekking along. Park stuff was on our left, water was on our right. And THERE was the Jefferson Memorial. Except it was on the other side of this Great Lake-sized body of water! What was that about? Couldn't there have been a little pathway straight across? I guarantee more people would go.

We looked left and we looked right, trying to gauge which was the shortest distance to the JM. It was hard to tell. We went left (always a good choice in most decisions) and kept walking and walking.

The closer we got, we realized how FAR it really was. We took a little detour to the bar of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel and refreshed ourselves. (We didn't actually make it to the Jefferson Memorial until the next morning.)



As we walked out, I saw a stunning woman in a beautiful gown, surrounded by many large fierce men. I said to H,"Oh, that's Tyra Banks!" He said, "Who?" "TYRA BANKS!" I squealed. I took my camera out to get ready and then I had a momentary hesitation. A woman who looked to be in her party was leaving and I said, "Is that Tyra Banks?" She said, "I think so." I said "OOH, I just love her. What would she do if I went up and said hello?” My new friend said,” You go girl! You may never have the chance again.”

So I handed off the camera to H with instructions to get ready to shoot. With a demeanor, I thought, of great devotion, I began to walk up to her. As I got near...but not that near...one of her big men got directly between me and Miss Tyra.

I looked around his largeness and said to Tyra, “I just love you. I love your show. (I’ve actually never seen either of her shows.) And I think you’re beautiful. And I don’t think you’re THAT fat, at all.” Ok, I didn’t say that last part. She smiled regally and said thank you.

For a split second I thought about requesting a photo, but I just couldn’t bring myself to that level of fan-dom. SO I told her again how much I loved her show and I backed away from her and her phalanx of protectors. As we left, H said, “I don’t think she was SO nice.” In the afterglow of having been in her presence, I insisted, “YES, she was. She said thank you when I complimented her. What did you expect?”

And for the record, she WAS slim, gorgeously outfitted, beautifully coiffed and magnificently made-up, which meant that she actually really was camera-ready…and so it was even more of a shame that I didn’t grab the opportunity. Ah well…stay tuned to hear about dinner…