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Published: June 21st 2017
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The US Capitol
Jan 19 2016 11 Visit to the US Capitol Washington DC Geo: 38.8921, -77.0241
Today was a bitterly cold day. Over breakfast in the hotel restaurant, everyone was warning about the upcoming storm, which was later named Storm Jonas. Luckily it seemed that the storm was due on Friday, the day that we were due to fly to Las Vegas. I had been annoyed that our flight had been changed from a mid-morning one to an 8:00am flight, but from what everyone was saying, it was starting to seem that it might be better to be able to escape early in the day.
We caught a taxi from the River Inn to the Capitol Building where we had prebooked a tour from home. Unfortunately, the beautiful dome was totally covered in scaffolding. It seems wherever we travel something is being renovated. When we were in Italy recently the Trevi Fountain was closed for renovation.
The tour of the Capitol was wonderful - we were all totally fascinated by the building and the history that we learned about.
After it finished we made our way through the "secret" tunnel into the Library of Congress – another spectacular building.
Our entire morning was spent in these buildings and we were all ready for lunch when we
The US Capitol
Jan 19 2016 13 Visit to the US Capitol Washington DC came out. We found a small group of shops not too far away. One of these was offering a soup and sandwich deal which was just what we felt like and was good value as well.
Our afternoon planned activity was the Air and Space Museum. Like all the Smithsonian museums, it was free which is fantastic. We spent a good two or three hours here and could have spent many more. Finally, tiredness and sore feet got us and it was getting late and would soon be dark.
We decided to catch Ubers to the White House. We obviously needed two cars for the eight of us, so we called for two and arranged to meet up at the White House. These Ubers were our only bad experience with Uber both in Australia and the US. It took much longer for them to arrive than what the app had said. Finally, our driver called and had no idea where to find us. We said that we were outside the main entrance of the Air & Space Museum and we were quite surprised that both drivers had no idea where it was! Eventually they both turned up. We piled in
Inside the Capitol
Jan 19 2016 38 Visit to the US Capitol Washington DC one driven by a pleasant young lady. It turned out she had only arrived in DC three days ago! No wonder she didn't know her way around. She finally managed to find the White House and dropped us out the front. It was very late in the day by then and absolutely freezing. We waited and waited for S and J and just as we were about to give up and start walking back to the hotel, they turned up. It seemed that their driver had only moved to DC the previous day and he ended up dropping them at the back of the building, so they then walked around to us. We actually would have liked to have seen the back too, but it was far too cold.
After many photo opportunities, we walked very briskly back to the River Inn for a much-needed glass of red. We rugged up in warm clothes again and walked the ten or fifteen minutes into Georgetown. What a lovely area. We had made reservations at Clyde's, a steak house. I ate a delicious strip steak with truffle mash and yet more red. Back to the hotel after a very long day.
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