OK guys, let’s not insult the man’s taste before he even gets a chance to answer the question!
Meh. Lazy minds gonna be lazy.
And don’t put batteries in that old man’s hearing aid. either.
Better stick to ‘Me TV’ if you’re too stupid to handle anything more challenging.
All I can really glean from your post is that you can’t parallel park and you have a hard time driving down the road, so you want someone to commit a terrorist attack.
Wow. you are REALLY too stupid to get that the streets around Georgetown are too narrow for parking and that something drastic has to be done to drag ALL those tiny street-cloggers off the streets permanently?
(I’m going to regret asking…)… wat?
Are you from Central Urban Planning? The sidewalks are barely wide enough for two people walking abreast.
Lots of buildings at Georgetown University: Healy Hall, Copley Hall, White-Gravenor Hall, and others. They remind me a lot of the nice old buildings at the University of Toronto where I got my first graduate degree.
Which one great building were you thinking about?
Arlington National Cemetery. Take the tram tour, witness a Changing of the Guard ceremony.
I was there last year, but they recently moved to a larger building that can display more exhibits.
Great museum with a really well though out design. The cafeteria is second only to the one at the National Museum of the American Indian.
It’s really entertaining when protesters are outside the fence.
I was there on the 4th of July itself. It was really cool, but extremely crowded. There was also a naturalization ceremony going on presided over by General Washington. Daytime fireworks too.
If you go on a moonlight monuments tour just remember to keep your phone charged or bring a portable charger to so can actually take pictures. :o
I disagree with you completely.
Personally I think it’s good enough to visit just for lunch, not just as a place to eat because you’re already at the museum and hungry.
Affordable White Sales in NoVa?
Wat?
Yeah, That wat.
Then parking should be prohibited. Two people walking abreast down the middle of a street can barely fit.
Welcome to Austin, then.
Healy Hall, the others looked like generic college buildings except for the monstrosity. I wanted to go in the library there but it was all locked up.
I figured being from Vienna you couldn’t swing a cat there without hitting a building as nice as Healy Hall.
Moderator Warning
Do not call anyone “stupid”, or any other insult, in this forum.
This is an official warning for personal insults outside of the Pit.
Moderator Note
I’m not sure what all of this is, but considering that this thread is only about tourist type information, this post is either off topic or threadshitting. Either way, don’t do this again.
True, but Healy Hall is nice in a very different way than the buildings in Vienna. I don’t recall seeing any buildings in that style back home.
I’m now back home and can offer the following brief report:
I arrived in Washington the afternoon of Friday, 21 June. Aften checking into my Airbnb, I headed downtown where I had dinner with a friend of mine whom I hadn’t seen since we were 13 years old. Now she’s the head Washington editor for a major TV news network. It was great hearing her first-hand stories about the massive upheaval in politics and political journalism in the last few years, and about her work in the White House press corps. After dinner she took me to the White House, which I got to admire from the outside. Of course, she’d been inside many times before, but I was unable to visit because foreign tourists need invitations from their embassy and mine never responded to my request. (My friend says that she’s often tried this as well to arrange visits for her friends and family members, but it’s never worked for her either.)
On Saturday morning I walked from the middle of the Mall to the Lincoln Memorial and then back again, passing the Washington Monument, the World War II and Vietnam memorials, the reflecting pool, and various nice buildings on Constitution Avenue. I then popped into the White House Visitor Centre (mostly to use the washroom, but I also had a quick look around) and then headed over to the Ronald Reagan Building, which I admired from the outside. I had lunch at a food truck (philly cheesesteak) and spent the first half of the afternoon at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. Then I took a cab to the Capitol for a pre-booked tour. I had planned to visit the Library of Congress afterwards, but it was closed to the public due to the annual librarians’ conference mentioned by NotherYinzer. However, I was still able to admire it and the Supreme Court building from the outside. In the evening I headed to Georgetown to visit the Exorcist steps and wander around the university campus.
On Sunday morning I dropped my suitcase off at Union Station and lingered a bit to admire the architecture inside and out. I then walked across the street to the National Postal Museum, which also has quite a nice interior, and proceeded to the National Building Museum to see the Great Hall. Unfortunately, the Great Hall was closed for renovations, so I kept walking to the Smithsonian American Art Museum and Center for American Art and Portraiture in the Old Patent Office Building. I had just enough time to take in the courtyard, the presidential portraits, and the beautifully decorated rooms on the third floor. Then I had to zip back to Union Station to catch my train to BWI Airport for my flight to Austin.
Thanks again to everyone in this thread for their ideas. It was on your recommendations that I went many of these sites, including the Old Patent Office Building, the Ronald Reagan Building, the Library of Congress, and the Great Hall of the National Building Museum. Pity the last two of these happened to be temporarily closed, even though I tried to visit during the usual opening hours.
Very nice. Any thoughts on the quality of the architecture/design?
Man, you fit a lot into a very short trip. I’m glad you had a good time.
To be honest I don’t know much about architecture, so I hope you’re not expecting some kind of detailed commentary on neoclassical cornices and art nouveau arabesques. I just like looking at nice buildings without having to think too much about why I like them. So I’ll just say that there was plenty to admire in downtown Washington, as well as a couple gems further afield. On an aesthetic level I liked pretty much everything I set out to see, with the exception of the Vietnam memorial. This was too plain in comparison to the WWII memorial, and especially in comparison to some of the monumental war memorials I’ve seen in Europe. By simply digging a trench into the ground and lining it with plaques, it comes across like they didn’t take things seriously enough to bother allocating any significant amount of money or imagination. Is that memorial highly regarded or do a lot of people share my low opinion of its design?