duPont Circle

After settling into the hotel Friday night I went out for dinner on duPont Circle with some friends from my summer internship. On the way we walked past lots of shops and ducked in to a few to take a look. There was the art gallery with paintings of irises and some metal sculptures vaguely resembling distraught naked men. Then there was "The Pleasure Palace" with various plastic objects not-so-vaguely resembling not-so-distraught parts of naked men. There were also stores we didn't duck into. For example, there was the leather store I was interested in checking out since I'm looking for a leather jacket. That is, I was interested until I noticed that the pictures in the storefront all featured muscular male torsos positioned close together and wearing absolutely no leather. Finally it dawned on me that this was not the sort of leather store where one bought a jacket.

Eventually we wandered over to a casual French restaurant where I tried Escargot for the first time. I would comment on the flavor of snail, but it was drenched in herb garlic butter and I really have no idea how snail tastes. In religion class last week we learned we shouldn't take killing animals for meat for granted, that we should always be sure to use as much of the animal as possible. The French, who eat all sorts of bodyparts I get squeamish just thinking about, were presented as an example. Eating the snail swimming in strongly flavored garlic butter, it occurred to me that perhaps the French get squeamish too and compensate by overpowering any possible flavor the odd bodyparts might contribute.