Our DC Adventure Begins

Welcome to another episode of speed-sightseeing, Anderton-style. We began the day with some morning rain, but as the day progressed, it cleared up and actually turned out to be a nice day. We are trying a new approach - no car rental, so we bought our 7-day passes on the Metro and headed out. KR was wearing her green coat, so I could pick her out in a crowd from a distance. No one else in the world has a coat that color. The Metro was very efficient and fast (good first impression), and we got into the heart of DC in only 20 minutes or so. This is going to be a piece of cake. We had a reservation at the Washington Monument and got in just before several busloads of high school students arrived - good timing. There is a small waiting room at the bottom and the elevator shaft. The whole thing looks more worn than I expected and the color of the limestone changes about 100 feet up. I was surprised it took so long to complete and was finished so relatively recently. The Monument was completed in stages, hence the different colors. I thought it had a smooth surface, but in reality the surface is rough limestone. It has some repaired places that are a stark white, so up close, the Monument is actually not that attractive. We went to the top, where they have some very small windows you can look out - they are actually in the top cone. A floor below is a small room with some exhibits. You can take the steps down the whole monument, but it was closed off, so we took the elevator back down. They did have some glass windows in the elevator so you could see the graffiti and many plaques placed on the interior of the hollow Monument. There are no steel supports of any kind holding the thing together - only gravity.

The National Mall has a much bigger scale than I envisioned - the various monuments more spread out and more well-used than it appears from a distance. Up close, it looks more like America's football field after a day of games than a park.

Our next stop was a quick tour of the Bureau of Printing and Engraving. They have a short tour of the area where they print the MONEY. It is quite a fascinating process using very sophisticated machinery to thwart forgery. It was fun to watch them handle all that new cash!

Most of the rest of the day was spent in working our way through the National Holocaust Museum. It is one of those places where you can't hurry and you are drawn to follow the whole story from beginning to end. Words cannot really convey what a horrible thing happened during that 15 years. Pictures, video, and audio do it much better, and this Museum does an overwhelming job of that. A very emotional and numbing experience.

We started looking for a place for dinner and wandered around the "Federal Triangle" and down Pennsylvania Avenue. It is amazing how many buildings and places you have heard of and seen in movies, etc. are packed into such a relatively small area. Below is a photo we took of Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capitol area.

We walked past Commerce, the World Bank, the IRS, Treasury, the FTC, the new Reagan Office Building, the FBI, State, Justice, and the Federal Reserve in our wanderings through the Triangle. Here is a picture of the Department of the Interior.

I noticed a restaurant in a flight magazine and made a note to check it out while in DC - Fogo de Chao. While walking down Pennsylvania Avenue, all of a sudden - there it was! It was one of those Brazilian meat-lover things where they bring various cuts of fire-grilled meat around to the table and you tell them how much you want. We enjoyed a wonderful meal with great service and ate too much. Hint - check out prices before ordering. We had no idea how much the grand meat circus cost until we got the bill. KR jokingly guessed $32 each. Actually it was $48.50. I about coughed up a pork chop.