Weekend in DC – A Capitologue

So, we set out to go the Capital city for the 4th of July weekend, and combined my passport renewal submission with it… one of my buddies suggested that we stay at the Townplace Suites on Hillwood Avenue in Falls Church, VA… The motel is really close to the nearby East Falls Church Metro Station – took us only a few minutes to reach there by car… parked the rental car there (for free, owing to the holiday weekend), and took the train into DC….

Trip Planning:

A simple search on google with such terms like “July 4th DC fireworks”, “things to do in Washington DC”, resulted in a number of hits, of which, most of them where from About.com.. The information from this site is quite comprehensive as it has various lists of places to see, museum schedules, train fares, etc. and a lot of links to other websites with more specific information about a particular place that one might want to visit in DC. Besides online references we also went to the local AAA office and gathered some maps (free with membership) of the city and a tour book with information about local restaurants, places to visit, etc, with timings, contact phone numbers, and such.

Related Links:

• About.com
• Indian Embassy Consular Division – http://www.indianembassy.org/newsite/passport.asp
• Smithsonian website — http://www.si.edu/, http://www.si.edu/visit/infocenter/mallmap.htm (Map of The National Mall)
• Washington Metro website –  http://www.wmata.com/
• Potomac Riverboat Company –http://www.potomacriverboatco.com/
• Zaytinya – Mediterranean restaurant – http://www.zaytinya.com/
• DC Circulator — http://www.dccirculator.com/DCCirculator.html#systemMap

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SmarTrip Card: This is one helluva payment system for all the three transit services  – Metro train, MetroBus, and the DC Circulator. It is available in most of the train stations if not all, and at some designated CVS outlets. Luckily I could find one near our motel. The card itself costs $5, and the first time you buy it (in a CVS), the card comes with a credit of $5 (so, the first purchase will be $10). Credit cards or cash could be used to later ‘charge’ your card at all/most of the train stations and possibly other places too. All one has to do, is hold out the card’s bottom portion against a circular sensor at the train stations, on the buses, and the charge will automatically be taken. One important point to note is that, with the train stations, the charge is upon exit.

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Day 1:  [July 03]

My experience at the Indian Embassy in Massachussettes Avenue, Washington DC

Lunch @ Zaytinya

Smithsonian museum of Natural History — We only saw a few sections inside this museum… At the very beginning of our visit, there was this huge section, with all kinds of animals…. dead… and stuffed… somewhere between developing a passion for photography and visiting zoos, I didn’t realize I had lost the inclination to gawk at dead animals, like others do. We did take a couple of customary pictures, standing beside the dead things…sometimes striking funny, ridiculous poses… But the best section that we hit was the Gemstones/Minerals section. Outside this section, the whole place seems like a regular American museum. I barely stepped inside, and lo! I was reminded of the mildly queasy feeling I’d have a result of entering jewellery stores a la GRT.   and yes, there were a lot of desis in there, and especially around the Hope Diamond. Everybody and their everybody wanted to take a picture of it. Some people were even shooting videos… (I wonder what the point of that is..photo I understand, but video? whatever…).. And nobody wanted to move on to the next exhibit… and well, I had to nudge and elbow a couple of people to get a couple of shots meself.  heh.  Besides all this, the minerals section was beautiful… a lot of my inorganic chemistry lessons flashed back in my head, when I read titles like silicate, SiO2, etc..

[ Nearest Metro station: Smithsonian ]

Potomac river cruise — Starts off from the dock @ K and 31st street, Georgetown –This river cruise starts from one of two places – Alexandria (VA) or Georgetown (DC). One could either take a roundtrip cruise or a one-way… We took the roundtrip starting from Georgetown. As we were walking out of the Natural History museum, I asked one of the guards there for directions to go the dock (Washington Harbour) in Georgetown. Apparently the best way was to walk to the section between 7th and 13th streets on Pennsylvania Avenue, and take any of the 30s numbered Metrobus to Georgetown… We were kind of pressed for time and were not sure whether Georgetown meant somewhere near the dock or totally somewhere else. So we started walking and on our way to Pennsylvania avenue, noticed the Federal Triangle Metro station… At that point we were somewhere near 13th street or so, and we wondered if we could take a train to minimize walking all the way or catching a bus….The nearest station to go to the dock is Foggy Bottom, which is on 23rd street. Our feet were already killing us, after walking a lot earlier that morning, but we just had to make it to the dock in time and we sort of speed-walked to the dock and reached within 2 minutes of departure. Luckily, the ferry taking us on the cruise was just about docking….We could’ve taken any 30 numbered Metrobus from 23rd street as well, but decided to walk the 7 blocks, after looking at the traffic…

[ Nearest Metro station: Foggy Bottom ]

Day 2:  [July 04]

Smithsonian Air and Space museum — Nothing spectacular to write about…Well, the museum is terrific, but just can’t recollect everything to write here… There is a store inside the museum, which makes dog tags with whatever gibberish you can come up with. We had ours made, with our name, b’day and a place of origin, and wore it on our necks all day long like silly teens…. fun times!

[ Nearest Metro station: L'enfant Plaza ]

Capitol Building, George Washington monument (obelisk), Lincoln memorial — Most people going to DC do not miss these and we didn’t either.

[ Nearest Metro stations: Federal Triangle, Smithsonian, Metro Center ]

We walked to the Capitol building from the Air and Space museum as it was only a few blocks away. We approached it from the side of Independence Avenue. It is roughly around (or) right after the intersection of Independence Avenue and 1st street, downtown DC. Took the DC Circulator all the way to 14th and Independence, and walked from there to see the Washington monument and Lincoln Memorial. By the time we finished touring the Lincoln Memorial bldg (which is basically fighting for a good spot to get a decent picture, with Abe in the background and without other human beings), it was around 17:30 hrs, and the steps to the Lincoln Memorial had only a handful of spots left. So we decided to just sit and wait for the fireworks which was to be around 21:15 hrs that night.

Fourth’a July fireworks on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial — We sat for close to 4 hours waiting for the fireworks to begin.. Fortunately enough there were a lot of people around and we were listening to people talk about different things… Some of the topics discussed were – PDA, salads, dieting, etc… And there was a choir group from London, who entertained the crowd with a few songs… Apparently they were performing at the Kennedy center the next morning, and they felt it was good practice singing for the crowd there at the Lincoln Memorial.

Around 21.15 hrs, the fireworks started all of a sudden…and in the next 15-17 minutes the sky was lit up, and so were countless LCD screens down below… I was entirely captivated, as always, and was shifting my glance back and forth between the fireworks and the camcorder screen. I think I have a decent recording of the entire event… we may have inadvertently recorded a couple of expletives in there…mild ones… quite possibly because of the splendor of the scene evolving in front of our eyes. … As we were walking down the streets of downtown DC, I realized that the fireworks in itself, are not anything special. It’s the place and way they were executed, that made it really spectacular.

Day 3: [July 05]

So, on the last day of our trip we hit the Smithsonian museum of American History, the White House, and the Siva Vishnu temple in Baltimore, MD.

Smithsonian museum of American History — The one thing that has been etched in memory is the Star Spangled Banner… They have preserved the original canvas/cloth flag — 30″ x 42″ — which was raised after the battle against the British was won, in Baltimore. It was upon seeing this flag, that the guy (can’t remember name) who wrote the American National Anthem, got his inspiration to write it. Both S and I felt a strange feeling creep up on us, as we saw this flag, and read through the history behind it, and about the woman who made it. I, immediately reflected back to the way the Indian Flag looked outside the Indian Embassy building right here in the same city… and of course to the way it is treated back home.

Other sections that we hit – an entire room dedicated to the history of Abe Lincoln, historic musical instruments (of course!), the section which showcased the First Ladies of the USA (brilliant!), a section which had vintage automobiles, railroad cars and such…

Whitehouse — Yet again, just a few cutomary photo shots, where everbody else was. Interestingly enough, finding the side with the best view could not have been easier. We were walking along 16th/E street (I think), and it was a while before we started walking along the perimeter of the Whitehouse….and then, all of a sudden there is a swarm of people, all gathered in one spot. One instantly realizes that the search for the best view (or the only view) has ended. The rest is just “going through the motions”…  taking out camera, squeezing into a spot, within which one could frame the subject and the Whitehouse, with a litte ‘no-man’s-land’ on either side, in the frame.   Once that has been accomplished, it is just a matter of switching sides to become the subject, in one quick motion, so as to not compromise the ‘no-man’s-land’  buffer. It is a developed talent, you see, for those who care….because in the end, it is just a matter of showing to friends and family and to other poor souls, that we managed to strategically place our bodies in said places and get nice photographs.

[ Nearest Metro station -- Farragut West or Farragut North. Farragut West is on the corner of 18th and I streets. ]

Siva Vishnu temple, Baltimore, MD. — Nothing much to describe about this one… Main deities are Ramanatha Swamy (Sivan), Ananthapadhmanabhan (Vishnu), Subramaniya Swamy & family, Balaji, Iyappan, and a host of others….and then there is the canteen downstairs, where one acquires food coma.

There is yet a lot more to see and more places to visit in and around DC… but we could only do so much in whatever time was available… hoping to visit DC again sometime in near future.