Anne had rented a car for our trip to New York, on Thursday we took the car and went to Washington DC for the day. It was actually beginning to snow in New York when we left in the morning, luckily in DC it was a nice and clear sky. Parking in DC however proved difficult. All the street parking and meters that we saw had a 2 hour limit, in the end we had to park in a parking garage. It was actually really strange, we drove down the ramp to the garage when the attendant there made a gesture, we stopped the car so we could ask him what he wanted but then he just turned around and continued talking on the phone. As we were in the garage searching for a sport to park the attendant came down and started telling Anne off because she had driven down.... Excuse me, but he should have made another gesture telling us to wait once he had our attention on the ramp earlier. Luckily it turned out fine though, he parked the car for us (why I don't know), and we could explore DC.
As we headed towards Washington Monument we walked past an art gallery, a WWI memorial and I also got a good picture of the White House from a distance. I'm glad I managed to get the picture of the White House as it turned out later that we couldn't go up close to it, maybe Anne and I just came from the wrong side, or maybe there was something happening but there were barriers up and police telling us to turn around so we couldn't get any closer.
Washington Monument was closed, they are still repairing it from the Earthquake in 2011, I think they're almost done though as the scaffolding was only at the bottom now. I don't think I would have gone up it even if it was possible though, not after the Bunker Hill monument!
From Washington Monument we headed down to Lincoln Memorial. I like that all the monuments are so close in DC. Lincoln Memorial was really cool, on the side of the wall inside is the Gettysburg Address, I've only ever heard the line "Fourscore and seven years ago..." so it was kind of cool to be able to read the whole thing, not that I'll remember any of it mind you. Of course the Lincoln statue is the coolest thing in the memorial, another thing I have only ever seen on TV and wanted to see with my own eyes.
Anne and I headed back towards the Washington Monument and had a look at the WWII memorial. I like all the stars on the wall, I think it said on a sign that there's over 4000!
This is when we tried to get close to the White House but since that failed we headed towards the Smithsonian instead. The Smithsonian is divided into several buildings/museums, we went to the Natural History one. On the way there we walked past a van selling cupcakes, I just had to try a red velvet one as I've not tried red velvet before. It was nice, but I prefer chocolate.
The Natural History Museum was really good. There was so many interesting things there, definitely worth a visit if you're ever in DC! I first heard about the Smithsonian on the TV series "Bones" and have wanted to see it since. I really wanted to find the building that they feature the exterior of on the TV series sometimes, but since I had no idea which building that is I just gave up.
I had a great day in DC and got to see everything I really wanted to. It's kind of cool because whenever I've seen DC on TV it's usually just the monuments and the White House I've never seen the city itself, so it was really cool to see that it was just a normal city like anywhere else.
Have you been to DC? What did you do and see there?
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