We see D.C.

Firstly, may I apologise for the extremely long post below, we did loads so I’ve bulleted stuff to make it a bit more digestible.

After a fairly hefty drive, punctuated by an overnight stop at proper motel and some fine southern cooking, we eventually arrived at the nation’s capital – Washington DC. There was a massive load of hassle with dropping the car, don’t ever bother renting from National; they’re a bunch of clowns. The place we were staying at wasn’t bad, a nice little room with a kitchenette and a single bed in the naughty corner for Joe. It seemed to be run by an eastern European version of the dumpy friend in “King Of Queens”, but this didn’t deter from his helpfulness.

DC was a bit of a strange place really, loads of huge administrative buildings, hardly any shopping areas, tons of parks containing memorials, but no-one looking all that official and the unfortunately high quota of homeless people, all set out on a very precise grid with a stretch of sidewalk closed on nearly every street. As suggested by guides & locals we explored on foot, and as virtually every exhibit is in a public building it was nearly all free, we went to so many places. If I’ve missed any links then you all know where Google & Wikipedia are.

The White House – An obvious place to start and totally not the building you’re thinking of. For years I always thought the White House had a dome thing like St. Paul’s Cathedral, but that is the Capitol and so in a way the White House is a bit of a let down. However the building itself is quite grand with loads of guards with machine guns mooching around the grounds, a CND permanent protest outside of the front gates, some guys playing street hockey nearby and loads of squirrels. No sign of Dubya, although we did see Jessica Simpson all dolled up one evening.


Constitution Gardens – We had a nice walk through here, well as nice as a walk can be through an area dedicated to memorials. The World War II memorial was actually designed pretty well, with several pillars representing the 50 states & affiliated US territories all circled around a pool and 2 gates for the Atlantic & Pacific oceans. This was at one end of the rectangular mirror pool you see in movies, and at the other end was the Lincoln memorial. A huge pillared building that contains a very impressive marble statue of the country’s 16th and still considered most popular president, as well as huge 30 ft marble carvings of his great speeches such as the Gettysburg Address. We then took a wander up to the Korean War memorial, maybe not all that applicable to a few Brits but the memorial was particularly moving with castings of field soldiers and a granite frieze of faces of some of the dead.

Tidal Basin – this is a segregated area of water off of the Potomac River that is partly functional and partly aesthetic. Our reason for taking the merry jaunt around it was to see the Franklin Delano Roosevelt & Thomas Jefferson memorials. FDR was the only president to serve longer than 2 terms (he actually started a fourth but died one year in) and along with his wife, Eleanor, did loads of work to turn the country round after the Great Depression. This more modern memorial featured loads of cool water features and various quotations dotted around the sprawling brickwork. The Jefferson memorial. was similar in style to the Lincoln memorial, but instead was circular & more open, with a fine bronze statue of the 3rd president who basically wrote the Declaration of Independence.

US Holocaust Museum – an intense place that, unlike other such places, didn’t concentrate solely on the subject of concentration camps, but started the story from just after WWI, so you got to understand the Nazi Party’s rise to power and then their demise rather than the usual “Hitler was a mentalist, murdered millions but then Tommy kicked his arse and it was all good”. I don’t know about Joe but Tash & I can never tire of learning more about this aspect of WWII and this museum was a truly impressive place of information & tribute.

Washington Monument – The big pointy thing that appears in EVERY picture & movie shot of DC. It’s fitting that the 1st president should be dedicated by the tallest all masonry structure in the world but a bit disappointing that there wasn’t a statue of him anywhere, except hidden in the Capitol. The trip to the top was worth it as the view out across the city in all directions was fantastic. The views up the Mall & back to the Lincoln memorial looked amazing from up so high. The obscenely strong winds outside also made the flags circled around the monument look pretty cool.

Bureau of Engraving & Printing – This is where US paper currency is printed and although it’s just a corridor of the history of US currency and then a load of dirty great big printing presses, the best bit is the cash. Literally millions of dollars are stacked there in front of you, teasingly behind Perspex. And all the people that work there seem so non-plussed by standing next to bundles of lovely greens. Just one sheet can be worth $3,200, even 3 or 4 times that to a collector if it’s uncut. “It’s all about the Benjamins, baby”.

The Mall – we took another gentle stroll along the huge, Pierre L’Enfant designed parkway that runs between Constitution Gardens and Capitol Hill, to take in some of the fine galleries and museum buildings of the Smithsonian Institute.

National Air & Space Museum – Not usually somewhere we’d spend a lot of time but there were some important things in here to see. It was like a real life gallery of the milestones of flight, including the Wright Brothers hand-made plane which they used for the first powered flight in 1903, the Spirit Of St. Louis used by Charles Lindbergh for the first solo trans Atlantic flight in 1927, the Mercury capsule that orbited the earth in 1962 and the pod form Apollo 11 that Neil Young & Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon in 1969 (or used on a studio set if you believe the conspiracy theorists!). There were also loads of bits of real rockets, space suits, missiles and some awesome photos taken from the Hubble space telescope. We had all been a bit gutted when we heard the main building of the Museum of American History was shut but glad that some of the exhibits were being temporarily housed here. From the Wizard Of Oz we saw Dorothy’s ruby slippers, the Scarecrow’s costume & a script page from when it goes B&W to colour. There was lots of old bits of Americana, Presidential personal effects, outfits, Kermit the Frog, the signpost from M*A*S*H and real Droids. Yep, actual costumes of C3-PO & R2-D2 as used in The Empire Strikes Back, I literally stood frozen to the floor with my mouth open when I saw them. (Tash had to physically move me along so the kids behind me could see!) Obviously they WERE real and just presented as costumes so that people didn’t disturb the droids while they had their primary systems shut down. One cool story I heard was when they shipped the exhibits across the mall each truck was insured for $15 million. The truck that contained the cape worn by Jackie Kennedy for JFK’s inauguration and the top hat worn by Lincoln when he was shot had only those 2 items in it! Even if some fashion nutter paid $2 million for the cape that makes a 140 year old & rather tatty beaver skin top hat worth $13 million!!!!


The US Capitol – this is the US equivalent of the House of Parliament, so this is where the Senate & House of Representatives convenes for Congress. I love this building from the outside (we saw the new & first female Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, having her photo taken at the eastern front) and it’s pretty flash on the inside. 2 amazing frescos decorate the Rotunda at the heart of the building, off of which are sprawling chambers containing offices & some amazing statues of past presidents, political figures and the most celebrated sons & daughters from each state. There was a quite ornate crypt designed to house George Washington’s coffin but never used. This was also the site where Tasha laid claim to Debbie’s “meeting someone you know from home whilst on holiday” crown by bumping into a girl she went to school with.

National Archives – This was a fairly interesting place but by this time we were on museum overload (a bit like you readers with this blog) so we skated over the history bits to head for the important stuff. For this building is home to the originals of the Declaration of Independence (1776), the Constitution (1787) and the Bill Of Rights (1789). The room in which they’re housed is under such low light & tight security that any hope of photos was out of the window, but it’s still stupendously impressive. There are several more cabinets of important documents such as the Louisiana Purchase but as a visiting Brit it was nice & patriotic to see a copy of the Magna Carta dating from 1297, which is held as a reminder of the law system upon which the US is built.

Ford Theatre – This is a quaint little theatre which was where John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln in 1865. We had a rather elaborate story given by the guide and a load of related memorabilia but not much else really.

International Spy Museum – Owing to the permanent suspension of tours around the FBI buildings since 9/11, Joe & I instead paid a visit to the Spy museum. We started off by having to learn a secret identity and then we were left to discover loads of cool exhibits about modern spy work, classic Cold War Espionage, Enigma decoding, the history of early spies in Japan & the Civil War and movie spies. Every now and then there was more information to embellish our secret identities, plus secret passages and bugs dotted around the building. When we got to the end there was a pretend security screening to see if we could convince the authorities of our secret identities – I got held until the Foreign Office could iron out some problems but I think Joe got detained in custody. Whilst we boys did spy stuff, Tash went to investigate the Old Post Office, but as this was closed she went off to investigate stuff.

So that was DC; steeped in history, totally intense and scary to think we fitted all the above into 3 days.