Monday, December 17, 2012

Weekend Ramblings...



What do you do the last weekend before a major (annual) journey to the Midwest?  Plan? gather? pack? wash? dry and iron? make sure all the electronics are in working order?  Naaahhhh, let’s go up to DC!  We left Saturday afternoon and fairly successfully navigated (with the aid of the GPS in Fluttermobile II) to a Marriott on 22nd St., NW.  As an aside, we are learning that the GPS fairy has a mind of her own, often routing you in strange ways, so we ignored some of her instructions and made her pay attention to what WE wanted to do.  But eventually we got there and turned the keys over to the Valet guy and checked in.  Somehow they upgraded us to a very nice corner room with a view of a hole in the ground, and the nearby Ritz Carlton.

Our purpose was to meet our friend up there, have a dinner and go to an evening performance of 16th Century music in St. Bernadette’s Church in Silver Springs.  Our friend selected a restaurant that was fairly nearby the church, called Mrs. K’s Toll House Restaurant.  We started off the evening with a lovely little cocktail hour in our room, “catered” by our friend.  We had his (famous) homemade smoked salmon spread, crackers, a selection of olives and peppers, some cheese, and of course wine.  He brought a Red (an ’04 Chilean Casa Lapostolle Syrah from the Las Kuras Vineyard), and we supplied White (’11 Chamisal Unoaked Chardonnay).  I have to admit that the red was clearly the favorite, jammy with overtones of chocolate (sorry, but it’s true).  It was a very pleasant time, doing a quick catchup and enjoying the food (we had skipped lunch).   Our dinner reservation was for 6:30, and the concert was 7:30 so we launched from downtown about 5:45 or so.  It’s a LONG way from DC out to Silver Spring especially on a busy Saturday night on surface roads.  We did however roll into the parking lot at just about six thirty and entered Mrs. K’s Toll House Restaurant.

One would think from their website the quaint place would be in a bucolic setting, on a quiet country lane.  Well, it’s not.  It is quaint, but it certainly is NOT in a country setting, it’s really on Colesville road, a rather busy thoroughfare.  But once inside it is pretty nice.  It’s one of those places that used to be a house so there are little dining spaces tucked here and there, up and down, kind of a labyrinth.   We were approached by our server (who unfortunately played the Hi I’m…. speech) and asked about drinks.  We informed her we were on a tight schedule and needed to be out the door at 6:20 or so.  She was really very kind, and said that in reality, the only shot we had would be to order a dinner salad (with chicken, shrimp, or salmon).  Acknowledging to ourselves that we probably pushed the scheduling too much, we did acquiesce and ordered Caesars all around; two with salmon and one with chicken.  The full menu was rather intriguing and I would have liked to taken advantage of it, but there’s always a next time. Dishes at adjoining tables looked very nice. We were served our salads in about twelve minutes as promised.  They were actually very good, a large hunk of salmon done just past opaque and a nicely seared chicken breast.  The busboy kindly supplied direction to “St. B’s” and we were in the car on schedule.  Unfortunately we were just a bit late, and we just caught the end of the remarks by the director.

The group is called Chantry, and about eighteen of them perform ancient music a cappella.  The program for the evening was “A Palestrina Christmas”,  by the Italian Renaissance composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, who lived in the mid 1500’s, and was the most important composer of the “Roman School”.  Whatever, the music as performed was just wonderful.  The lyrics were printed in the program both in English and Latin, but of course was sung in Latin of course, made to accompany the Mass.  Once again, as in the Messiah, a four line piece was made to last several minutes by endless repetition of each line..  But, in this case the music was so beautiful it didn’t matter.  What a wonderful concert.  And, once again, I was left wondering if what we heard was what a person  in the 1550’s would hear in their church.  One (me anyway) tends to think of “ancient” things as being rough, crude, and elementary.   Apparently not.  500 years later, and it is still riveting..

The next morning, we joined our friend for a church service in the National Presbyterian Church, out near the National Cathedral.  They were doing their Christmas time services, featuring seasonal music.   They had horns for the prelude, strings accompanied some of the Hymns, and they have a newly refurbished organ with some 7000(!!) pipes.  It was astounding.  We’re not particularly religious but it was quite the spectacular service.  That kind of music in a church setting somehow is moving.  The pastor had some very nice words to pass along in light of the recent tragedy in Connecticut.   He, like us didn’t have any solutions or explanations, but offered some comforting thoughts.  The last piece was Joy to the World, a nice way to end.

Anyway, as I told our friend, we spent more time in churches this weekend than we have in years (I don’t count my “chapel time’).  But at this time of year, it is so appropriate to celebrate new beginnings, hope for the coming year, and by golly they got the music right!!

 There’s more to come about yesterday, but we’re both kind of tired..  Sorry I didn’t have any images to soften the prose, but not a courteous thing to do..

Thanks to our friend for such a glorious weekend, and we have to revisit Mrs. K!!  where again we will be

DFD

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