The Capitol

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Today I needed a lie in, so slept for much of the morning. It wasn’t until 10am that I woke up and I then spent the following 2 hours lazing about in what was one of the best hotel rooms we’d stayed in so far. It was just 4 miles outside of Washington D.C in Arlington, Virginia. The beds were really comfortable and the shower was good. I spent most of my time updating the travel blogs from previous days where I didn’t have internet and arranged many of my hundreds of photographs.
It was a rush to leave the hotel room as none of us were prepared at all for our late check-out deadline of 12noon. We checked out quickly and left at around 12.15.
The weather in Washington D.C was better than we could have expected, with clear blue skies and below freezing temperatures.
We first decided to try and find parking beside the Washington Monument. Washington was one of the most difficult places to find good parking, and we ended up settling for an expensive parking meter that we had to top up every 2 hours.

We first visited the Museum of Art, which was very grand – as everything was in D.C. My first impression of Washington D.C. was that a lot of money had been spent to make US look very grand and impressive. It was almost as if they had spent too much money and reminded me of Ancient Greek or Roman architecture. A lot of the art there was European of Rome or Venice, and Earls and Dukes, including Sir Henry Raeburn.
Capitol Hill was exactly what I expected the White House to look like, and I actually got the two mixed up, it was very impressive. I was a little disappointed that we couldn’t even go up the stairs due to excessive security. There was a real sense of security and rationality about Washington D.C - it was very grand and powerful.
We walked to the Washington Monument which was surrounded by US flags, almost a bit excessive, but it showed you how patriotic the people of the United States are. There were a lot of memorials and Museums in Washington D.C all close by each other, surrounding a large wintery cold park.
There was the Vietnam Memorial, Korean Memorial, Holocaust Museum, Art Museum, Washington Monument, Jefferson Memorial and many others.

One in particularly that I was surprised by was the Lincoln Memorial and the reflection pool. I’d seen it on television in movies before, but to see it in person was surprising. The reflection pool was frozen over with ice, and the Lincoln Memorial looked God-Like. It looked like a temple with steps leading up to, with a stone carved statue of Abraham Lincoln sitting tall in an arm chair with one of his quotations engraved above him.
We left the memorial to get back to the car and decided to head to the White House before sunset.
We found another parking place which was very expensive. The White House was nowhere near as impressive as anything else we’d seen and I was surprised by how small and unimpressive it was in comparison to anything else. The plot of land it was on was very large, and of course security was very tight. The US flag was flying high above the White House, and the sun was beginning to set, so we grabbed some food and left Washington D.C for our 1,100 mile drive down to Miami, Florida.

Unfortunately we got stuck in rush hour traffic, so it took us 2 hours to even get out of the area, travelling a total of 5 miles in the first hour.
I decided to sleep at around 10pm and slept right through until the next morning.

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