Washington - the city of memorials and architectural wonders!! A day's trip to Washington DC is sufficient to visit the most part of the city, unless someone is interested in some particular form of art specially architecture.
We left NY late night and reach DC quite early morning. The street lights were still on and as scheduled, we reached DC at around 3am. Now we had to look for our accomodation.
The place we had booked didnt have a 24 hour check-in (though the website mentioned so). We had option to wait in the waiting hall of the hotel for another 5 hours talk to the manager and pay a couple of day's rent in the hotel or get out of there and the advance payment towards the booking would be confiscated. We chose the latter option. We needed some rest. We started searching for some adequate accomodation and did find one soon. The morning taught us something - do not book your hotel unless confirmed on phone (then why the hell is the internet facility provided - wouldnt i book a room by phone !!!).
Anyways finally after paying almost thrice the charge a day, we got a room for a day and half and at around 6 in the morning we dozed off. We got up a few hours later and again hit the roads at 11. We booked tickets on local historical tour buses - hop on and off style - the same as we had in NY. These buses run from 9 in the morning. We got our first bus at 12 and we were left with another 5 hours for touring.
5 hours were just sufficient for us to visit the important points on the tour. The first one was a Cathedral. The centuries old Cathedral was a sight to watch. The glass paintings on the windows, the architecture, the designs, the wall paintings - it was all wonderful. Next we headed for the farther places of the city (we decided we could do the places nearby to the hotel on foot).
I would call Washington a city of memorials and monuments. Every second point on the tour was a memorial to some national icon or hero(es)- there's lincoln memorial, roosevelt memorial, Korea war memorial, vietnam war memorial and many more.
One of places that I could not manage to go were the Pentagon (at least one can view from outside I am sure).
One wonder in the DC was a house that was only 7 and half feet wide. The town of Alexandria. The town has classic look and is one of densely populated pockets of the country. There is a law regarding property tax that the tax is proportional to the breadth of your property that faces the road. Your property can go to any depth :) Hence there is an apartment which is just over 7 feet wide :) (of course you can find even narrower and smaller houses in Dharavi, Mumbai :P)
Then there is a stretch of bunglows that house ambassadors of different countries. This are is quite silent and you can at least see the flags of the different countries if not the officials :D
One must visit the Capitol building during night time and have a walk along the path that is opposite the Capitol building. and on a full moon night with a clear sky, the place is simply wonderful. The still waters in the pool in front of the Capitol building adds to the beauty.
And you can go on and on and on about the place that is capital of the United States of America.
(The trip was done on 29-may-2006)
