I was reading a Dan Brown book some months back and came across something that struck me. At one part the main character, Professor Langdon, is lecturing his class and asks them who had visited Europe. A substantial number of students raised their hands. Then he asked how many had visited our nation’s capital, Washington DC. The response was a lot less. Langdon goes off into some rant about about patriotism and our nation’s rich history and how it’s a shame that a lot of people have never even been there but have been to countless other countries.
Well, I was as guilty as the fictitious students were and Doug and I decided we needed to remedy that and make a trip back east.
Around this same time I had an interesting conversation with a coworker, Brad, who was taking a big trip abroad with his entire family in tow. As our conversation progressed he told me a bit about getting and using sky miles (something I’d never done before). Long story short, we signed up for a Continental credit card and got enough miles to fly round trip from IF to DC (for free). If you’re interested in doing this yourself you can check out Brad’s blog here: http://worldwanderlusting.com/
We got into DC late Wednesday night and stayed at a hotel near the airport. The majority of the next morning was spent jumping from one form of public transport to another to get to our hotel in Arlington. We unloaded there then took public transport back into DC to finally begin being tourists. The rest of the day was spent on a self-guided tour of all the monuments. We were both pleasantly surprised by how clean and beautiful the city was. For one reason or another, I had the impression that it wasn’t that way.
The next morning we forged through the rain and had a tour of the Capital. Oh what a beautiful building! It was so fun being in DC right in the heart of history.
After the Capital we headed over to the Library of Congress, Ford’s Theater and the White House.
Saturday was museum day. We first went to the Holocaust Museum. The museum was very well done and informative. What a tragedy. Most of my time in there was spent shaking my head in disbelief, sadness and disgust. When I was in Europe I had the chance to visit the actual location of Corrie Ten Booms“The Hiding Place” and visited a concentration camp. The museum brought back memories from that and I learned a lot. The museum had a traveling section as well that was fascinating. It was about Hitler’s propaganda in Germany from the very beginning through WWII. Amazing the power of one person (good or bad) and what he can accomplish through subtle (and at times, not so subtle) propaganda. Crazy what we can be tricked into thinking is right or wrong. We could have spent twice as long in there as we did.
We headed over next to the National Archives and were able to see the Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights. Funny because the night before we caught the second half of National Treasure. The duration of the movie was peppered with exclamations of “Look! We were just there!” “We’ll see that tomorrow!” “Look it’s that building we passed today!” etc. It was probably my favorite time viewing that movie.
We made it to Arlington Cemetery before closing time and were able to catch the changing of the guard over the tomb of the unknown soldier.
I’ve been asked quite a few times if we ate awesome food in DC and unfortunately the answer is no. Not only did we not find awesome food, but we pretty much just couldn’t find food in general. It was so strange, we walked over the entire city and would rarely come across a restaurant. Even when we were looking for one. Obviously we didn’t know where to look so I’ll have to get advice on restaurants before our next trip over there.
The next morning was boarding the Amtrak and on to NYC!