Washington DC – A Traveling Fool

Several of us had decided to stay an extra night in DC so we could do a Hop On Hop Off sightseeing trolley and spend more time immersing ourselves in the museums and history in the US capitol city. We were back in the hotel from which we began our trip and I was back in another suite! I do love it when I get an upgrade as suites are not something I can afford on my own. It’s a fun extra!

I took a walk to the nearest grocers to get a few things for the next couple days. Had free water again, but the room that had the pastries and fruit the last time was closed this time. Probably was too late in the day. After a light dinner, I walked to Lafayette Park from which there was supposed to be a Lincoln Assassination Walking Tour departing at 7pm (meeting at the statue of Andrew Jackson). But nobody showed. So I took some photos of Blair House and other houses around the park, a fountain, and a statue before heading back to the hotel.

Blair House is actually a complex of four houses that have been melded together to be used as the President’s Guest House – usually for foreign dignitaries. This began after a visit by Winston Churchill to FDR when Churchill displeased the First Lady, Eleanor, by wandering around the White House in the middle of the night and trying to gain entry to the private apartments to talk to FDR. Not as many folks get to spend the night in the Lincoln bedroom anymore. There must not have been anybody staying at Blair House at the time I was there as I could get quite close to it without seeing any guards (or people who could have been Secret Service).

The statue I photographed was of the Comte de Rochambeau. He was heavily involved at the Battle of Yorktown with his French troops, helping George Washington to defeat the British General Cornwallis. I think it’s a cool looking statue.

As it was getting dark, I headed back to the hotel for the night. I planned to be at the first stop of the trolley tour when it began in the morning, so I could fit as much into the day as possible.

The first stop was the Willard Hotel. The hotel was founded in 1847 and has had numerous important guests during its history. Lincoln stayed there for several days before his inauguration in 1861. Martin Luther King wrote his “I Have a Dream” speech while staying there in 1963.

Once I got on the trolley, I rode it down Pennsylvania Avenue and up Louisiana Avenue to Columbus Circle and Union Station. It was raining and I had been to Union Station on a previous trip to DC, so I stayed on as we went past Union Station and the Supreme Court Building to the Library of Congress Jefferson Building. It was still raining, but I wanted to see the inside of this lovely 19^th century building so I jumped off. The interior was gorgeous.

Once I got on the trolley again, we headed for the Capitol. From there, we did a circle around the area where the American Indian Museum, the Air & Space Museum, and the Holocaust Museum resided. The rain had let up by the time I left the Jefferson Building. But something was going on in the area of those museums, so we couldn’t stop at the designated stops or anywhere near these buildings. There were lots of police and such. Never did find out what the problem was.

We snaked along for a while, and then sat in traffic for quite a while before we could circle back around. By the time we had gotten back around, the heavens had opened and we were experiencing a deluge. We had lost quite a bit of time and still couldn’t get close to the buildings I wanted to visit, so I decided to swing by again later in the day. I had some other places I wanted to make certain that I got to, torrential downpours of Biblical proportions or no.

I stayed on until the Jefferson Memorial. It had stopped again by then, so I got off of the trolley and walked to the memorial. I had been to this memorial on a previous visit at night, so was looking forward to seeing it in the daylight and the area around it. It is in a beautiful setting right on the Potomac.

After getting the photos I wanted and hanging out for a bit to take in the views from the memorial, I hiked over to the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial. By that time, it was raining again lightly, so I got some semi-soggy photos there. Then I headed to where I could catch the trolley again. The Martin Luther King Jr Memorial did not yet exist. That was built in 2011 (I was there a year too early).

I rode the trolley to the Lincoln Memorial to switch to the Arlington Cemetery Loop to go to the Custis-Lee Mansion (home of descendants of Martha Washington through her first husband, Daniel Park Custis). Martha’s son bought the land that is now Arlington Cemetery and his son built the house. The grandson’s daughter married Robert E. Lee. When Lee chose his state, Virginia, over his country and refused to lead the Union Army, taking command of the Confederate Army instead, his property was taken over by the Union. It was in a very strategic position overlooking important parts of the Capitol. Once the Civil War ended, the plantation was converted to a national cemetery.

It was quite a hike up the hill to the house, so I sat down once I got there to look out across the cemetery and DC itself while I caught my breath. The house was being restored while I was there, but it wasn’t too far into the restoration. I did take a couple of interior shots, but there wasn’t much to see yet and we weren’t allowed in too much of the house. It was still great to see as much of it as I could. On my previous trip to DC, I had only been able to look up at it from the eternal flame at JFK’s grave below. This time I looked down at the eternal flame from the house.

Once I spent some time at the house and in the Civil War portion of the cemetery, I took the trolley back to the Lincoln Memorial and switched to the main trolley to go to the World War II Memorial to see it in daylight. I had planned to go to the National Museum of American History, but was tired and in need of food. So I decided to put that one off until later too and headed back to Ford’s Theatre as I knew there were several places to choose from to have lunch in that neighborhood.

After lunch, I switched to the National Cathedral Loop where I photographed the Cathedral, Dumbarton Oaks, and several locations in Georgetown. Dumbarton Oaks was originally built in 1801 and has been enlarged several times. The gardens and portions of the house are open to the public. It is mainly a research facility however.

After leaving Georgetown, we headed back towards the White House and my hotel. The house where James and Dolly Madison lived after the White House was set on fire during the War of 1812 was bordering the other end of the park. I had actually been past it several times without realizing what it was. It looked like a great house.

I caught a photo of the entrance to Chinatown and then left the trolley at the White House gift shop. After scouring the gift shop, I realized I was running low on time and energy. So I walked back to the hotel (picking up something for dinner on the way) and got ready for my flight home the next day.

The shuttle I was on to Reagan National had a traffic accident. It was minor enough that I wasn’t hurt, but we still need to wait for the police. A replacement was sent out by the shuttle company. By the time the replacement arrived and got us to the airport, I had missed my flight. So I re-booked a flight leaving from Dulles and needed to take a taxi there. Ended up in a long cab ride in a very heavy rainstorm. Although I made it to the airport in time and got my luggage checked in, I couldn’t get through security fast enough to make the flight. Fortunately there was another plane from Dulles in just an hour. When I finally got to Minneapolis, my luggage (which arrived on the earlier flight) was waiting for me.

Next time – I head to Turkey for a two week tour.

Blair House
Statue of Rochambeau
Willard Hotel
Union Station
Supreme Court
Library of Congress Jefferson Buildinh
Interior of Jefferson Building
Jefferson Memorial
Jefferson’s Statue
FDR Memorial
View from Custis-Lee Mansion
Custis-Lee Mansion
Inside Custis-Lee Mansion
Eternal Flame at JFK Grave
National Cathedral
Dumbarton Oaks
House where Madisons stayed
Entrance to Chinatown

For a fall 2010 tour of the US Historic East, including Colonial, Revolutionary, and Civil War sites, I had an early morning flight from Minneapolis to Chicago. I do dislike early morning flights. But I would rather take one when going to a domestic destination and have a decent amount of time on my first day than taking a late flight and not getting to see anything before the tour begins. This tour, the flight from Chicago to Washington’s Reagan National was delayed by a thunderstorm. After getting a good late lunch at the hotel, I set off to explore the area around it.

I was upgraded to a suite on a special floor where you had to use your room card on the elevator when selecting the floor in order to get there. Unlike Amman, Jordan where I had a suite but couldn’t use it, I had two full nights at this hotel. After getting back to the hotel from my exploration of the neighborhood (the hotel was roughly a block from the White House), I checked out the VIP room for the people on my floor. I found bottled water, fruit, pastries and small bottles of sparkling wine. Trying not to be too much of a pig, I hauled a few items back to my room. I wasn’t going to need to go anywhere for dinner that night.

We had about 45 people on the tour. Since it had to do with US history, there were several Americans. We also had a few Canadians and a couple of Brits. Our Tour Director was named Scott. At our meet and greet that evening, I met a couple of ladies (Judy & Gaye) from Louisville, Kentucky with whom I often sat for dinner or lunch.

The following morning, we began our tour with a walk to Lafayette Park and the White House. However, we were fairly quickly asked to leave as the President and his family were walking from the White House to the church on the other side of the park (St Johns) to attend Sunday morning service. So we walked back to the hotel, jumped on our tour coach and made our way to Arlington National Cemetery.

The first thing we did was to visit the graves of President Kennedy, Jackie, Bobby & Ted. Then we looked at some of the Civil War graves before heading to the Iwo Jima Memorial. The land upon which the cemetery stands was originally owned by the Custis family. These were the descendants of George Washington’s wife, Martha and her children by her first husband. Martha’s great-granddaughter married a fella named Robert E. Lee.

When he resigned his commission in the US military and took the reins of the Confederate army (actually the Army of Northern Virginia at that time), Lee stationed his army on his property. This was way too dangerous for the Union. So once the Union managed to remove Lee and his forces, they took over the property. It wasn’t widely used as a cemetery until after the war ended, although a couple bodies were buried on the outskirts once the other cemeteries in the DC area filled up.

The Iwo Jima Memorial is actually dedicated to the US Marines. This was not a memorial that I saw on my first trip to DC back in 1999, so I was glad to see it. We then visited the Korean War Memorial, which I find to be very haunting. Next came the Lincoln Memorial (one of my favorites) and the Vietnam War Memorial. The son of one of our neighbors back in Dallas, where I grew up, died in the Vietnam War. We had enough time there for me to look up his name and find it on the memorial.

We drove by the Capitol, only stopping for a photo from across the lawn. That was okay since I had been able to go inside on my last tour to DC. I had other plans for my free time in the afternoon. We were dropped off at the Smithsonian National Gallery of Art to get lunch and set off on our free time. We could either return there later in the afternoon for a pickup or make our own way back to the hotel. I chose to make my own way back.

After lunch, I walked to Ford’s Theatre. During my last trip, I had been able to see the museum in the basement of the theatre, but not the theatre itself. It had been closed due to a performance of a play. After paying for my admission, I walked up the stairs and entered the theatre at the balcony level. I was retracing John Wilkes Booth’s footprints at that point, but then I departed the path he took to walk down to the front row of the balcony and sit down to soak it all in.

When I was in college, I had designed the costumes for a play which ended up traveling to Ford’s Theatre as part of a competition for play productions from universities around the US. Since I wasn’t actually in the play that time, I didn’t get to go. Just my costumes. I stared at the stage for a while, imagining my costumes moving about down there.

Although you can’t get into the Presidential box itself, you can see right into it from the same perspective that John Wilkes Booth had in the small hallway right behind the presidential box. I managed to get a pretty decent photo from there without reflections. After spending as much time in the theatre itself as I wanted to, I went downstairs to the museum and explored that again.

I had been pretty much all by myself in the theatre and had purchased the ticket to see both the theatre and the Peterson House across the street. Back out in the street, there wasn’t any line in front of the Peterson House at all. I went in and found that I had it pretty much to myself too. The challenge with photographing the bed on which Lincoln died, is that it is completely surrounded by glass. So getting a photo without reflections is difficult. But I don’t think I did too badly. He was too tall for the bed and had to lie diagonally across it.

On my way back to the hotel, I went by Madame Tussaud’s, so I decided to stop in. In addition to the usual actors, singers, etcetera, this one had several historical figures and presidents. Not all of the wax figures are great likenesses of their subjects, but they can give you a good general idea of what someone looks like – especially height and build. Since you can walk around among them, you can stand toe to toe.

That night, we went to Georgetown for a delicious seafood dinner, followed by a visit to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. I sat with Judy and Gaye at dinner. They were delightful company.

A World War II Memorial had been built in 2004. We visited it too and took photos from there of the Lincoln Memorial, Washington Memorial and Capitol. The WWII Memorial was quite beautiful at night. It has memorials for both the European theatre and the Pacific.

Next time – we set off for Alexandria, Mount Vernon, Yorktown, Jamestown, and Williamsburg.