Washington Wow - the capital of the USA

Washington DC, USA
21-28 August 2010

   The capital of the United States of America is Washington DC, and it is mighty impressive. It is home to a massive collection of museums, many of them Smithsonian museums and many of them amongst the best in the world. Whatever your interests, I think you could find a museum of interest here. And, the Smithsonian's are Free! Aside from the museums there are impressive buildings, monuments and the National Botanical garden is just fabulous. I thought I would spends 4 days in Washington, but I decided to skip some other places and stay a week here. Lucky for me I had a friend hosting me, and his place is even in a top location.

Arlington cemetery. WOW! The remains of 320,000 servicemen and servicewomen are sheltered here. Some famous....

.... and some unknown. This is the tomb of the unknown soldier. It is guarded all day everyday. The guard paces 21 paces from end to end, waits 21 seconds and paces back again... again and again. It is actually and extremely moving place. Changing of the guard is every 30 minutes in summer, every hour at other times.

Union Station, WOW! It is beautiful inside and out. And massive.

"I have a dream....". The Lincoln Memorial is where Martin Luther King delivered his famous speech.

Capitol (think Parlimentla house) has free tours, you can book them through your senator or book online (as I did)... thanks Wikitravel for this hint! Yep, it is WOW too.

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The Smithsonian Natural History Museum is ... well ... WOW. The mammals! The human evolution (forget primates... this goes way further back!), the butterflies, insects, gems... there is so much to see here.

The other must see attraction, no photos, is Washington DC's Jewish Holocaust Museum (entry Free). It is definately not an uplifting experience, but heartbreaking. The stories are so sad. I have been to other fantastic Holocaust Museums before... but this gave me a much better understanding of the events that happened and how they came to happen.

Notes

Smithsonian Museums FREE

Spy Museum (Interesting and Fun, but it makes it sound like the USA never did any bad spy work) $18.

Grey Line Hop On Hop Off sightseeing bus (I would try one of the other company tours, there are at least three others. This tour had recorded commentary that isn't particularly interesting, I overheard some of the trolley bus (driver talks over mic) and it sounded more interesting) $35 for 2 days.

Metro Tickets, usually less than $2, and easy to negotiate your way around. (meaning that, another hop on hop off bus might be worth doing, but it isn't worth spending $35 on the Grey Line Washington DC bus for the quality of it's commentary, when the metro is so do-able.