Wow. Yesterday was a very full day in our nation’s capital. Cas and I woke up and went for a workout. This is a recent plot twist- we hadn’t prioritized working out in previous trips, but our Italy voyage left us both heavier at the end than when we started, despite the insane amount of walking. Workouts are probably in order. And something happened at our hotel- nobody has been to clear on what. Some kind of water damage or other happened prior to our arrival, so they made a deal with a very nearby Gold’s Gym to get all of their guests access to that facility. So, for the first time ever, I worked out in a Gold’s Gym this morning. It was exactly as much fun as any other gym on the planet- pretty much what you’d expect.
We made our way back to the hotel for showers and a little get-ready time. We started all of this pretty early so we could get out the door for a scheduled tour of the White House, so when the time came, we were back out and ready to get on the Metro. We hustled a little bit, but we got there in time for our scheduled tour. We did exactly what we were supposed to do- we wrote to our congressman and asked for tours to all of the pertinent things, but our guy only followed through with the White House tour, and I suspect it was because he needed only to forward that to the Executive Branch. The FBI building, the Supreme Court, the Library of Congress and the Congress building- we’re on our own. We broke down and booked most of those things ourselves, too- we just don’t have an adorable intern shuttling us around. Last time I was around these parts, it was 2012, and I had a bow-tied Alex P. Keaton lookalike showing me and my younger brother the senate floor and the crypt. I digress. Every Capital visit is different. This time, I saw a TON more of the White House and a lot less of Congress, but it was all very cool.
But back to the start- the White House- where to begin? It was great. We saw the rooms that were available on the public-facing tour. The dining room and the East room were huge, but I gravitated toward the hallway with the literal red carpet where I remember distinctly Barack Obama walked up to a podium and announced that Osama Bin Laden was dead. I also remembered a very specific scene from a movie I liked with a staircase I saw today. If you ever watched The American President, I walked past the staircase where Annette Benning and Michael Douglas walked into a very public fist date. I know their actual staircase was a Hollywood replica, but it was a very good replica.
From there, we decided to head back to our hotel. There are rules to the White House tour, and they pretty much mean that you can’t bring anything with you. As a result, we needed to retrieve my purse, our sunscreen and all of the bottled water. On our way, we walked through a farmers market, locating the best empanadas I have ever had. Fun fact- the Farmers Market in DC has to sell only handmade goods. Bottled water is rarely handmade. We had the promise of an amazing lunch in our hands, but nothing to drink until a block or two away when we popped into a sandwich shop and bought water. Once we finished our lunch on a bench at Franklin Park, we were back at the hotel to regroup. Time for tour number two.
Tours of Congress start in their visitor’s center, which is underground with some very large skylights for a little bit of sunshine. We went in and were processed through their lines for our tour. The whole lot of us in the time-stamped group were ushered into a theater and shown a film about congress, then divided into five groups. To join a group, you had to select a tour guide from whom you would retrieve a headset, then enter a line of people to tour around with. We picked the guy you couldn’t really see well, because he was concealed behind two other people. The first thing he said once we got our headsets on was that his group appeared quite small. Perfect! He took us around the building from the downstairs Crypt, so named for the unrealized intent to bury George Washington in it, to the rotunda where the portraits and paintings stole this show. It was a pretty good tour. Here we are after the tour ended:
Afterwards, we felt less time pressure. The timed-entry tickets to these things kind of put us on a clock, and when we accomplished them, we were a little more free. So free, in fact, that we went exploring a bit. We ended up at a place called Bullfeathers, which I am convinced I had heard about before, though I can’t remember where. It must have come up in a movie or been a part of some political scandal. Regardless, it was a very nice bar and restaurant with breezy patio seating and a nice happy hour. I really think we were in the spot where all the interns and aides went for post-workday beers. The clientele was young, they all seemed to know each other, and they were all dressed better than Cas and I were. It was actually very cool. I felt like a local- just for a moment.
Bullfeathers was a stop on our way back to the waterfront. We decided the best way to wrap up our day of touring was a water taxi tour on the Potomac, so we found a boat and got out on the water. The ride was great, but the recorded tour information was pretty quiet, and we refused to go back into the enclosed part of the boat. We’re right-up-front people. Regardless, we saw the Jefferson memorial and the unusual looking Watergate Hotel, along with a hazy view of plenty of other things. The haze was no joke, though. There are some nasty wildfires roaring through parts of Canada right now, and the smoke has traveled south. If you look at our photos, the ones from Thursday evening are fuzzy, and not because of our cameras.
With the boat ride in the books, we were pretty wiped out. It was time to find our way back to a bed, so we opted for a bus that took us to the Metro station. We hadn’t used a bus until that moment, but the walk to the Metro station from the Wharf was a long one, and we had already topped 20,000 steps each by that point in the day. (Whew!)
Today, we have nothing in particular scheduled, which is a nice change from yesterday. We’re sleeping in and adopting a more leisurely pace. I suspect there are museums in our near future. More on that later. In the meantime, Cas has our photo album up and running: https://photos.app.goo.gl/i5YWxcScDLHgbJqLA
Here we go- day three…
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