Washington, DC

I arrived in Washington DC at the train station and caught the bus to the hostel. The bus driver was very helpful, until I pointed out the top of the Capitol building asking what it was, he just replied it was just some office building! 

On my first day I walked down to The Mall with the hope that I could get into the Library of Congress without waiting too long in a queue. Now I have found an advantage to travelling out of season, there was no queue and I was able to join a free tour straight away. The Library of Congress holds miles of books, some of which are incredibly valuable and rare. They have on display a Gutenberg Bible and a Giant Bible of Mainz - the only two books you get to see, they also have lots of rare collections, including Adolf Hitler’s, either by buying them or through donations. The Library doesn’t look like an ordinary library, it is highly decorated with lots of murals, statues, marble, gold leaf, most of it is primarily European style though all the designers, architects, artists had to be American born.

After the Library of Congress it was another tour, this time of the Capitol building, you don’t get to see many rooms, but you certainly get an idea of the place, including the Rotunda. We also were shown the Old Senate Room and where the statues of each state are displayed. Each state gets to send two statues to the Capitol, these tend to be of the most famous people from that state, the newest ones included Ronald Reagan and the King of Hawaii, the latter being far more impressive than the former.

For the final bit of culture for day one, it was the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Air & Space. All the Smithsonian museums are huge and free, so even a quick peruse of the exhibits takes 2 hours, let alone reading anything! Of course the museum has many exhibits which are relevant to America’s role in air and space so I didn’t have a clue what half of them were, but I did see the Spirit of St Louis, Amelia Earhart’s plane, Apollo II and lots of other flying machines, plus a mock-up of London’s Elephant & Castle tube station.

After my first day I realised that even though The Mall is only 1.4 miles long, which in itself isn’t too bad to walk, you have to take into account the walking around the museums and sights into the amount of walking your feet can do. All of the museums are huge and because they’re free I wanted to visit as many as possible. But after day one I knew I had to limit myself before my feet fell off. Plus my first whole day in Washington DC was Halloween and the hostel had organised a bar crawl of the Adams Morgan part of the city to celebrate. I couldn’t resist, so I joined about 30 other backpackers on the bar crawl, which lasted 6 hours, but we only made it to 3 bars - hardly a huge amount, but the area was packed and it was hard to find bars that could take such a large group and didn’t charge a cover charge. It was a great night, even if our costumes were a little lacking, I am surprised how willing some men are to don blond wigs or tiaras though!

Day two was a quieter day, I didn’t have a hangover (honest), but the lack of sleep reduced my museum visiting motivation. I did spend a good 4 hours at the Museum of Natural History, but that was about it. Sleep beckoned.

Day three and I was back on form, I was up early and collected my ticket to go up the Washington Monument, then went to see the World War 2 memorial on The Mall. By this time the museums were beginning to open (I was up very early) and so I went to see the Holocaust Museum and tried to avoid telling the guide (I was ear wigging to a group nearby) that it wasn’t the English who started World War 2 - he implied that because the English allowed Hitler to have Czechoslovakia that the war happened, no mention of the French or British, or that Hitler might have had something to do with it. But I held my tongue. After the museum I headed to the Old Post Office for views from the top of their tower, it’s not as high as the Washington Monument, but as it was free (there’s a theme here) and in a different part of town, I went to the top. And in case that wasn’t enough high rise visits, it was time for my tour of the Washington Monument - the highest stone structure in the world - or some such claim. The view was great, I could see into Virginia and I was tempted to cross the bridge later so I could claim setting foot in another state - it looked close from the top (it was close, but my feet weren’t willing). Surprisingly to me, the White House is smaller than I thought and not just from looking down from the monument - I think they must magnify it on the TV.

As I was on The Mall, I then walked down towards the Reflecting Pool and the Lincoln Memorial, taking in the Vietnam War Memorial and the Korean War Memorial, all of which were very sombre, though the signs on the Lincoln Memorial telling people to be quiet out of respect confused me a bit. Why did we have to be quiet and respectful to Lincoln and not to any of the other presidents at their memorials?

As it was turning into walking the monuments day, I saw the plaque for the Martin Luther King memorial, which is still waiting for the actual statue or whatever they plan and then on to the spacious FDR area. This was all granite, waterfalls and bronze statues, remembering important events in FDR’s career. As I hadn’t read ‘Don’t know much about History’ (American in this case, though my mother despairs at my general lack of historical knowledge) at this point, I really didn’t have a clue what the events were, but now I believe there were the fireside chats that FDR did, not sure about the dog one, but his wife had her own statue to acknowledge her efforts too.

Finally, I carried on walking around the Tidal Basin and made it to the Jefferson Memorial, a huge Greek style circle of columns and wotnot, it certainly looks impressive, even if there’s not much info about the place. I am wondering how they’ll acknowledge future worthy presidents, because they’ll run out of space soon, unless they decide no other president is worthy of a huge and expensive thing to commemorate them.

On my final morning, before my train left, I made it to the National Archives to see the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, Declaration of Independence and one of the copies of the Magna Carta. Then after these venerable documents it was onto my final museum - The National Museum of the Native Indian. Where each tribe has curators who work with the museum to give a better idea of the past and present day Native Indians. It also has a café downstairs serving traditional foods, so being incredibly brave, I tried the ‘fried bread with honey’ which is nothing at all like English fried bread (it seemed a lot healthier), so I was being slightly adventurous - but seeing as I couldn’t work out what half the other dishes were and I was hungry I went for a safe option… Then it was off to the train and a chance to rest my aching feet.

Washington DC is great for tourists, most of the museums are free and in a central area, to counter this everything else is expensive, I reckon government people get paid too much if they can afford to live there! The other thing you have to get used is the constant security checks, which means having  your bags scanned and going through metal detectors. It means you get to know what gets detected and what doesn’t, water and tweezers seem to be fine - belt buckles on the other hand are very dangerous. It is inconvenient, especially in many cases no one’s actually looking at the screens as your bag goes through - it’s not that people aren’t paying attention, it’s that there’s no one there to look! In all, I’m not a huge fan of the city, it’s great for culture, but there was something about it that put me off - can’t say what exactly, maybe the excessive security checks, maybe that people who live there are to work in government, so it’s not a place where people see as their base forever, rather transient? Not sure, but not my kind of town.

Next stop: Chicago