Capitol City

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On Wednesday morning I had a nice, big breakfast before heading out to look around Washington DC. Much like Canberra, Washington is a designed city and, like Canberra, it is not in any state but in a territory (or, rather, a district – the District of Columbia, or DC). Washington is also full of government offices, like Canberra. However, comparing Washington to Canberra is like comparing a Mercedes Benz to a Hyundai Getz.

The layout is based around the National Mall. That is the long stretch of park that runs from the Capitol building down to the Lincoln Memorial. I figured the Capitol was the closest starting point to my hotel, so I headed there. It’s a very impressive building and I later was told that no building in Washington is allowed to be taller than the dome. That makes sense because, like the Washington Monument, you can see it from most parts of the city.

There was also a rally on the Mall just in front of the Capitol – something about a Farm Bill – so that added to the flavour of the moment. I listened to some congressman address the crowd for a bit but it meant little to me so I moved on down the Mall, taking plenty of photos.

Unfortunately, at the moment there is quite a lot of work going on re-laying the grass on the Mall. Judging by the older bits, it is well needed, but I would have liked to have seen it without the trucks and bulldozers. One section looks almost ready, and the grass looks great so it will be fantastic when it’s finished.

As I walked past the work, I stopped at a refreshment stand for a Dr. Pepper (I’m developing a real liking for the stuff) before continuing on. It’s quite warm here so the drink was well needed, even though it was still early. The next major site was the Washington Monument, a massive obelisk in the middle of the mall. Its position is such that it is the centre of a cross, where one line runs along the Mall between the Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial, the other line running from the White House to the Jefferson Memorial. The Washington Monument is huge, and would provide an awesome view from the top. However, the monument is no longer open to the public so I just have to imagine.

I could only catch glimpses of what I think was the White House because there are lots of trees in the parkland between it and the Washington Monument. The Jefferson Memorial is easier to see from there, because mostly there is water between it and the Mall. I walked around the Monument and continued up the Mall towards the Lincoln Memorial. On the way, I looked around the World War 2 memorial. It was very impressive as well.

In front of the Lincoln Memorial is the Reflecting Pool. Actually, there is one in front of the Capitol as well, but the one in front of the Lincoln Memorial is the iconic one, being very long and featuring in TV and movies (for example, Forrest Gump). It reminded me of the water in the gardens of Versailles. In fact, I was also reminded of the park around the Eiffel Tower when I was walking towards the Washington Monument. I suspect that’s not entirely coincidental.

The Lincoln Memorial is also very impressive; the statue of Lincoln is huge and well sculpted. Some of his words, including his Gettysburg Address, are on the walls and are stirring even if you are not American.

After having walked the length of the Mall, and having had a couple of gruelling days beforehand, my back was pretty sore so I decided to chill out for a bit before continuing. Once I was ready, I headed on.

I wanted to head towards the Jefferson Memorial and had to walk around the water to get there. This was fine, because there were a few things to see along the way. First was the Korean War Memorial. This was small, but features statues of a patrol of soldiers moving together. Adding to the atmosphere was a group of veterans who were visiting at the time I was there, with some current servicemen.

Next was the newest monument (I think) – the Martin Luther King, Jr Memorial. This featured a sculpture of the man, and some of his great words, which were also great to read. Then I headed to the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial. A similar thing here, but it is set out like four rooms, each one for each of his terms (he’s the only president to serve more than 2 terms). Again, he had some very wise words on his monument.

And then it was around the water to the Jefferson Memorial. The dome over this is quite impressive and like the Lincoln Memorial, it was almost temple-like. If this was a different age, like ancient Rome for example, you could see the Americans deifying the men they’ve created these monuments for. At the Jefferson Memorial, there are signs asking you to be quiet and respectful, almost as if it were a church.

I was really starting to feel quite tired now, but I had one destination left – the White House. It was quite a walk away, too, with an even longer walk back to the hotel. But the miles weren’t going to walk themselves, so I got going. After crossing the Mall and walking up the hill towards the White House, I was quite surprised about the change of the general vibe of the place. Up until then, the monuments were quite awe-inspiring and solemn. However, now there was not only a massive increase in security personnel, but there was suddenly a bunch of vans on the street selling really cheesy tourist souvenirs. And it wasn’t even nice souvenirs, they were really crappy and you can’t help but wonder who would buy all the “I

I walked around the White House and took photographs from both sides. May be it was just my exhaustion, but it didn’t really do much for me - mostly because you couldn’t really see much. I guess that’s understandable, because it’s somebody’s house and there’s a lot of security required. But after visiting the monuments and memorials, it was a bit of a let-down. Anyway, I returned to the hotel absolutely buggered.

On Thursday I planned to take it a bit easier, as my body was still feeling a bit sore and tired. My only plan was to visit the Air and Space Museum so I didn’t bother taking all of my camera equipment – just the indoor lens fitted to the camera. That meant I didn’t need to carry my backpack, which I figured would give my back a bit of a rest. I arrived just before 12 and thought I might spend 3 or 4 hours. In fact, I left at closing time – 5:30.

I had a nice chat with the guy at the information desk and he said there was a free tour starting at 1pm and he said that the World War exhibits aren’t visited on the tour so I might like to check them out first. So I did. Unlike the Udvar-Hazy Centre, this was much more like a museum. There are plenty of actual aircraft (and spacecraft in other exhibits), but there is much more information, context and smaller items on display.

After visiting the World War exhibits, I had a quick drink at the only food outlet inside the museum – a McDonalds – and then joined on to the tour. Our tour guide ran basically chronologically through the history of “anti-gravity”, as he called it, because ultimately that’s what the museum was about – fighting gravity. Obviously the history is very American-centric. But then, the history of flight and space is also very much American.

The tour started with the Wright Brothers. Their plane that is in the museum is not quite original – all the metal parts are, including the engine, but the rest was recreated because it had not been stored with preservation in mind. Like the tour guide at the Udvar-Hazy centre, the guide for this tour was full of interesting stories about all of the exhibits he showed us. From the first flight, we then headed to look at other early ground-breaking planes such as the Spirit of St. Louis (flown by Charles Lindbergh from New York to Paris). It was interesting to discover that the plane had no windscreen so it was a wonder he was able to land safely. There was also a plane owned by Amelia Earhart (not her final one, obviously).

We soon moved on to the space exhibits. While there was nothing as spectacular as a space shuttle, there were some very interesting and important items in the museum regarding space flight. These included the Apollo 11 re-entry capsule, a full size lunar-module and a lunar rover (neither used). The tour went for 2 ½ hours and again the time had flown.

Again, I was quite tired at the end of it, so for a bit of a sit-down I headed to the planetarium to watch a couple of shows. The 2 I wanted to see had a half-hour gap between them, which I used to have a look around at more of the exhibits. The planetarium displays “movies” on a domed roof, with inclined seats to facilitate viewing. The first one I watched was about exo-planets (planets outside the solar system) and the history of our searching for them. The second show was narrated by Whoopi Goldberg and was called Journey to the Stars. It was quite well done, but I found it less interesting because there was nothing in it that I didn’t already know. But, it was good to sit down for a bit.

I had half an hour left and I looked through some more exhibits before a quick visit to the gift shop and heading back to the hotel. Also, it was during this final half-hour that I regretted not bringing my photography bag – it had my spare battery in it. D’oh!

Today (Friday) I had a single day tour of Mt Vernon (George Washington’s estate) and Arlington Cemetery booked. I had to be at Union Station at 7:40 for an 8am departure. As the station was about half an hour’s walk from the hotel, I left at 7 and had time to grab a quick bite to eat before we boarded a bus and crossed the Potomac River into Virginia.

Our bus driver / tour guide was a funny bloke and the bus ride was most enjoyable. Actually, tour guide is probably not quite the right term because while he pointed out sites on the way (including the Pentagon) and told us about what we would be visiting, he didn’t actually come into any of the sites we visited. We arrived at Mt Vernon right on 9 and the bus driver suggested we head straight to the mansion as the lines build up as the day goes on. So as we left the bus, I headed straight there along with everyone else.

The mansion is basically as it was in 1799 when George Washington died. It was a very nice house for the time, and the view from the front over the Potomac was fantastic. From there, we had a couple of hours to wander around the estate. I headed down to Washington’s tomb and arrived there just as a bit of a wreath-laying ceremony was starting. A volunteer gave a bit of a talk about Washington, and then there were some ex-servicemen to lay the wreath and say a prayer written by Washington. Then the volunteer led the crowd in the pledge of allegiance. It was a bit uncomfortable being the only one not saying the pledge, but even if I had wanted to join in for some reason, I wouldn’t have a clue what the words were.

From there I had a wander around the farm before heading into the museum and education centre. Inside they had displays about Washington’s life, including some life-size models of Washington at ages 19, 43 and 57. The earlier ones had been created using computer technology to determine what he would have looked like at those ages, because all representations of the man were from late in his life. Our tour guide had also recommended that we head into the theatre to watch the Revolutionary War presentation. It was really well done, featuring two screens (one being a map, the other having the action) and even included vibrating seats when cannons fired and some fake snow that fell on us. I’m not sure what the snow was made of, but there was no trace of it on anyone when we left the theatre.

As directed by our bus driver, I picked up a sandwich as I left so I could eat lunch on the bus as we headed to our next destination. That destination was the church in old town Alexandria, where the Washingtons worshipped. The talk given by the lady was semi-interesting, but it turned out that one of the men on our tour was a pastor from Tennessee and he wanted to lead us in prayer. Again, I was left sitting there while everyone else participated.

We jumped back onto the bus and, to my surprised, headed back into DC to visit the Lincoln Memorial, as well as the Vietnam and Korea memorials. The Vietnam memorial was the only one I hadn’t visited on Wednesday so I went there, took some photos and then relaxed for a bit reading a book until it was time to get back on the bus. Next stop was a quick photo opportunity at the Iwo Jima memorial.

Our final stop for the tour was across the river again to the Arlington National cemetery, which is a military cemetery started during the Civil War. Again, our bus driver told us an interesting story as to how it started – apparently it was Confederate general Robert E. Lee’s estate and a former friend of his, who was upset when he joined the Confederate’s side in the civil war, had organised its confiscation and used it to bury soldiers in the rose garden so that Lee wouldn’t want to live there when the war was over.

Again we left the bus but we were put onto a cemetery tour bus to visit two of the three major sites within the cemetery. The first was John F. Kennedy’s grave. We had time to leave the bus, visit the grave and take a couple of pictures, before we had to rejoin the bus and head up to the amphitheatre to witness the changing of the guard ceremony at the tombs of the unknown soldiers. The ceremony wasn’t that interesting, to be honest, featuring only 2 guards and a superior officer – not even a goat like they had up in Quebec! Again it was back on the cemetery bus which took us up to Robert E. Lee’s house, but we had to skip that because our tour was over.

We rejoined our bus which took us back to Union Station. All in all, the tour was worth doing if not overly spectacular. From the station I walked back to my hotel for my fourth and final night in DC. This is also pretty much the half-way point of my holiday. It sure has gone quick! Tomorrow I am back in the car as I head south into Virginia.

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Photos

A Squirrel on the Mall
I should stop taking photos of these guys, they're bloody everywhere! The ones here in DC are clearly used to people.

The White House
from the other side

X15
This plane should hold the speed record, but loses it on a technicality. In the background is the X1, the first plane to break the sound barrier

Comments

[Jenny]

Really enjoying the blog. Washington sounds interesting. I am enjoying learning a lot about American History and America that I wouldn\'t have known! You need to write a travel book....you have a way with words and the pics are great too. Keep the squirrel photos coming the kids will like them! lol