The Capital

Erin took her first trip to this nation’s capital just last week. Just as she has heard from people her entire life, Washington DC in August was crowded and extremely hot. In fact, we thought it was hotter in DC than it had been in Dallas (although that story is quickly changing now that Dallas has a forecast of highs in the 100s for the next week). We survived, however, and saw all the major sights, plus a couple minor sights, in three and a half days.

The trip came up on short notice when John finally found out a week beforehand when he was to give a presentation to some clients at the Pentagon. We have friends from Amsterdam living in DC now, so we had wanted to go up to see them anyway, and we got to stay with them over the weekend.

John was a bit nervous about getting into the Pentagon after he was instructed to take the metro to the Pentagon stop, ride the escalator up and wait at the top of the escalator for a man in a yellow tie. Mysterious. It got even more interesting when John arrived at the correct time and waited, and waited, and waited. No guy in a yellow tie showed up. So, John was trying to check his blackberry to make sure the time and place were really right. Suddenly his blackberry stopped working. All this time, a guard with a machine gun is standing a few feet away closely watching John. To solve the blackberry problem, John determined that maybe taking the battery out and putting it back in would help. Of course, taking your blackberry apart in front of the Pentagon looks a bit suspicious. The guard moved closer. When reinserting the battery did not help, John thought he’d look through his briefcase to see if he even had the number for the man in the yellow tie. While rifling through his bag (again, a suspicious activity for a single person waiting in front of the Pentagon), John became aware that the guard with the machine gun had moved closer and was talking to another person. John felt this was probably a conversation held only so the guard could be closer to John and monitor his movement.

Eventually the man in the yellow tie turned up. After all this waiting in the 100 degree temperature outside the Pentagon wearing a suit, John was a little wet. Thankfully, it only took a few minutes to pass through Pentagon security and John had an hour or more before his meeting to cool off. The Pentagon security allowed John in before they even knew what he was doing there, and there were no confrontations with any armed guards.

All this, the plane tickets and a super fancy hotel room at the Ritz for a 20 minute presentation, which, John points out, seemed to bore the clients to tears. But then, John was finished by noon and we had the rest of the day to go sightseeing.

Some notes on visiting Washington DC in the summer:
- The Spy Museum is very interesting, but it goes on and on and on. We spent way too much time in the first three areas and ended up zooming through the last few areas because one can take only so much of one museum.
- It’s almost pointless to go to the Museum of Natural History on a Saturday in the summer. It was wall to wall people! After seeing a few major items, John was going crazy with all the people so we left.
- Even though the line at the National Archives looks short (compared to many other lines in DC) the 45-minute posted wait time is indeed true. We thought this would be a quick trip before joining our friends for dinner, but we ended up waiting almost an hour to get in. This is not very comfortable in the heat of summer.
- Bring your sunglasses. John forgot his, so we shared one pair depending on who was in the most pain (usually John). The Supreme Court is blindingly bright in the daytime sun.
- If you need to take a nap in the afternoon and want to do it in a secure place, find yourself a tree on the Capitol grounds and rest in safety. We noticed after lying down and napping for about 20 minutes that we had had our very own armed guard watching over us the entire time from the nearest sidewalk. After we left, another guard came over to inspect the ground where we had been and must have been satisfied since he walked off rather quickly.
- The Native American Museum has a good cafeteria with a wide range of food available. It’s a little expensive, but the buffalo burgers are huge so we split one.
- Take care before joining a guided tour at the Library of Congress. Our tour guide was extremely long-winded, and the only reason we wanted a tour was to get to go see the main Reading Room (which of course is the last stop on the tour!). Honestly, one boy on the tour played his handheld video game the entire time, even right in front of the tour guide. John and I bolted right after the Reading Room. We were glad we did, because several minutes later we saw that our tour guide was still going strong! The Library of Congress itself is great! This is only a warning about the tour guides.
- The Lincoln Memorial really is better at night.
- Bring good walking shoes. Large memorials and buildings look much closer than they really are.The Bureau of Engraving and Printing is not open on Saturdays. Erin made a slight error by scheduling this stop on Saturday only to find out Friday night that it is only open Monday through Friday. Ooops. We’ll have to do that on our next trip.