Washington DC, USA – Three things that make this one of the best national capitals in the world.

Washington DC is not just another big city, it is a unique enclave, different than many of the world’s capital cities.  Unlike London or Berlin, Washington DC is a district to itself, built to be the center of government.  It felt different than Tokyo, Paris, Madrid or Sydney in how easy the city is to visit and navigate.  Almost everything a first-time visitor wants to see is in a beautiful central location, right on the National Mall (sadly for Kate, not a shopping mall but a large expanse of open space bordered by most of the famous stuff you want to visit).  The top three things in DC for us were:  1. Walk the National Mall from end to end, 2. pick a Smithsonian Museum like the African American History Museum and invest a whole day, and 3. do the flight simulator at the National Air and Space Museum.

The National Mall is served by good subway service (to Metro Center on the Red Line or Smithsonian on the Blue or Orange Lines).  We used the subway to get to the Mall daily and went early in the day, mid-day and traveled outwards from 5-7pm but, surprisingly, it never felt crowded or packed (albeit we were visiting in May but there were tons of school groups already).  The Mall is bordered by the White House on one side, the Smithsonian Castle on the opposite, the Congress and Supreme Court buildings on one end and the Lincoln and Vietnam Memorials on the other end.

We started our visit with a tour of the Congress building, organized through our Representative Greg Walden’s office; general tours are conducted on a regular basis and it is a great mix of American government history and architecture.  Judi had worked on the Senate side for Sen. Mark O. Hatfield while in college, so it was a fun return for her and all new for the rest of us.

John Harper – future Congressman.  Looking good in Rep. Greg Walden’s chair.

The Smithsonian Museums made up a huge focus of our time.  In the sea of white marble buildings that make up DC, there is a red sandstone building near the Washington Monument (which is two shades of stone because construction was halted mid way during the Civil War and completed later), which is the Smithsonian Castle.  It is a good place to start getting information about the various Smithsonian Museums and we took the 40 minute tour of the building, which gave us a good background of the founding of the museums and the story of James Smithson.  Smithson was an Englishman, born in France and who never came to America.  In a strange twist, he had no children and the nephew who was to inherit his estate died so the back up plan in his will was to leave his $11 million (in today’s dollars) fortune to the United States of America for “the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men.”  A pretty cool mission statement to develop without a focus group or consultants way back in the 1830s.

Smithsonian Castle – visitor center

About 2/3 of the museum system’s budget comes from the federal government and the rest from donations and interest off the original bequeath.  There are 19 museums in the Smithsonian network, including the National Zoo – all of which are free to enter.  Let me repeat, FREE.   The one trick we discovered was that in order to see the popular African American History Museum you have to have a timed entry ticket.  There are 400 tickets available if you line up at 1:00pm daily and some same day tickets are available at 6:30am on-line.  This is how we got our tickets but note that there is a small processing fee to reserve the tickets on-line.

We visited the Castle, American History, Air and Space, African American History and National Portrait Museums.  At the Castle, take the quick tour as mentioned above; American History has so much to see and cover but I was particularly amazed to see Lincoln’s hat form the night he was assassinated; Air and Space has awesome flight simulation rides ($10 per person – John did barrel rolls and Kate was his gunner and shot down five other fliers during their session – totally worth the money and 40 minute wait) and the Air and Space Museum has the best hands-on section of young kids (much better than the American History Museum); the National Portrait gallery has great portraits of the American Presidents, takes less than an hour to enjoy and has it’s own Subway stop; the African American History Museum is almost overwhelming and it can easily take all day.

President Lincoln’s top hat from the night he was killed.

Air and Space Museum

The African American History building is the newest Museum and it is confusing in that you have to enter the exhibit doors (poorly marked) which takes you to an elevator on the third basement level.  Once there, you enter a hallway that is narrow and packed with people anxious to start reading about the arrival of slaves to the New World.  We navigated the crowd until it thined out and then started our experience.  There is no way to exit other than going through the three floors of the exhibit and up the ramps.  The three above ground level floors are also worth visiting and cover music, sports, hands on experiences and so much more.  It was very powerful for me to watch African American families explaining events and history to their children.  My strictly anecdotal observation was that while there was a good mix of white and black people spread throughout, I noticed that caucasians seemed to read in depth at the KKK and lynching information.  I think that, for me at least, while I know that I can’t fully understand what is like to be black in America, I look at those white faces smiling back at the scene of a lynching or proudly marching in a parade in full KKK hoods and feel sick.

Confronting history.

Just off the National Mall, and not a Smithsonian Museum, is the Holocaust Museum.  Again, entry is free but we reserved a timed entry ticket on-line.  It is well done and well presented.  I would encourage everyone to take the two hours it takes to go through the museum.  For us, having been to Auschwitz this past year and watched HBO’s Band of Brother series, it was anticlimactic.  Much of what is in DC is a copy of things at Auschwitz – entry gate sign, cremation ovens, gas chambers, etc.  It was interesting to see the kids reaction to seeing, what for them, were ‘copies’ of the items that they had seen in Poland.  The good part for us was the excellent movie about the rise of Hitler and how he could come to power because of the aftermath of WWI; it is easy to draw parallels to the disaffected angry voices of America today.

We enjoyed walking the Mall to see the Vietnam Memorial (what John and Kate know about the conflict is based mostly on our visit to Vietnam) and the Lincoln Memorial (John – “it isn’t as big as I thought it would be.” Kate – so this is where Martin Luther King gave his speech, cool.”)  We also did the visit to the White House which is fast and not that interesting; but it is cool to be on the White House grounds (Kate froze when the Secret Service guard asked her for her birthday, which will be something we laugh about for a long time to come).

Lincoln Memorial

It was also interesting that random cool stuff happened to us in DC that we haven’t had happen in a while.  I wondered if it was just luck or the fact that we are in a place where we can speak the language or maybe we are more open to the unexpected.  We stumbled into a cool event at the National Portrait Museum where the kids got to screen print their own souvenir bags, John got some Trump chocolates from a guy who asked Kate to take his picture out front of the White House and we took an Uber to M Street in Georgetown tin order to explore and find designer cupcakes (because Kate had seen it on Cupcake Wars or something like that).

Kids at the White House

We could easily have spent another five days in DC and look forward to returning but we also felt like we crushed the things that we wanted to do.