Before we arrived in Washington we heard so much about it, good and bad. The good was Washington itself was meant to be an exciting city with lots to do. The bad was the train was parked in a really bad neighbourhood. We just hoped the good lived up to all the hype and the bad was totally exaggerated.
It didn't look promising as we rolled into the train yard, passing some fairly run down estates and had a police guard 24 hours a day at either end of the train. We had been warned before we arrived here “Do not go walking around anywhere near the train”, which is just great when even the taxis wont come out this way. As usual though I think people over react and you can really see that America is brought up on fear. Yes it wasn't the best area but I think during the day it was OK to go out though I made sure we where home before dark. It was about a 30 minute walk to the metro that took 10 minutes to get you down town, so there was no way I was going to be stuck on the train for 3 weeks.
Washington has some wonderful elaborate buildings and you could spend a lot of time just wandering around taking them in.
Another thing Washington has a lot of is memorials and many of these are on the Mall. I really liked the mall, it always seemed to have something going on, like a quidditch game and was a great place to just people watch.
One of the newest Memorials is the World War II Memorial.
We had to go to the Lincoln Memorial to see the big Lincoln that helped in 'Night at the Museum 2' and he is indeed big and you can get an amazing view of the Mall and the Reflecting Pool from here.
At the opposite end of the mall is State Capitol, another impressive building.
Just next to The National Mall was a Sculpture Garden which was really nice a peaceful, and free to get in.
Next to this was a Butterfly garden, another peaceful place, though it being an outdoor garden and the weather only just starting to warm up, there weren't many butterfly's to be seen.
Our stay in Washington coincided with the National Cherry Blossom Festival. This is a two week festival to celebrate the start of spring and the cherry blossom trees that seem everywhere in this city. We managed to catch a few bits of the festivities mainly on the Saturday we went to the Mall for a pillow fight.
Every year in most of the main cities around the globe there is a pillow fight to celebrate National pillow fight day. It is a flash mob type of thing and I asked Willow if she would like to go and surprise surprise she was totally in to the idea. So on our last Saturday here, me and Willow hid our pillows and headed for the fight at the Washington Memorial. Willow said to me on the way in “I have never really had a proper pillow fight.” There where about 600 people fighting so I guess it doesn't get much more 'proper than that and it was so much fun.
The only museum we paid to get in was The International Spy Museum. We had heard it was really good and it was OK but to be honest with so much free things to do in Washington I wouldn't really recommend it to anyone as there are better things to do for free. There was a little to much reading of things and Willow got a little bit bored in there.
There are a lot of shops in downtown Washington but if you want to shop here I would recommend a short walk or metro ride to Georgetown. We had heard it was nice but hadn't really been that bothered about going as we aren't really that in to shopping. I'm glad we changed our minds and checked it out.
Another place that was a nice surprise was The Old Post Office Pavilion. We went there to grab something quick to eat and realised you could go up the clock tower to get an amazing view of the city.
On one of our first wanders around the city we went to The White House since it is one of those must see tick the box type of things. The road seemed to be blocked off and the lady we bought our ice creams from said it meant the president would be leaving soon. So we hung around a bit and watched President Obama leave, it was pretty amazing the amount of security there was on the ground and in the air. We were quite pleased to see him, it is a bit like going to London and people ask did you see the Queen. We went to Washington, “Did you see the president?” “Yes we did”
All in all I really liked Washington.
*Smithsonian Blog to follow*
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