It was a quiet morning in the neighborhood, with folks perhaps taking it easy after the Halloween block party that happened in this suburban part of DC. There weren't many other signs of the holiday, although one house still had candy in the tray by its front door for kids!
Awe-inspiring Architecture
We drove back to downtown DC, stopping first at the National Building Museum, a museum of architecture, design, engineering, construction, and urban planning. It's a private, non-profit institution, so was shielded from the government shutdown that affected our visit. Admission is $10 per person, and as soon as we walked in, we were in awe of the interior: the Great Hall has 8 colossal Corinthian columns raising from the floor to the top level of the 5-story museum, with a fountain in the middle. What a grand and unique entrance, perfect for the museum's focus! The exhibitions are in rooms around the perimeter of the Grand Hall, spanning the first 3 stories.
There were about 7 exhibitions when we were there, including an exploration of architecture, construction and design from children's books; constructions of famous buildings around the world made from LEGO blocks; artifacts of famous buildings (including plenty of retro souvenirs), architecture from the American south, and more. According to one exhibit, people can spend up to 90% of their lives indoors(!), so it's important to design and create spaces that appeal to how people live, scrutinizing everything from the town plan, to the types of materials used in the buildings and how they are built. There's a ton of fascinating information packed into the exhibits that made it well worth the visit for us.
Famous Government Monuments & Memorials
After our trip to the National Building Museum, we zipped past Chinatown, finding a free place to park on across the water, where we had lunch and then got our e-bikes to explore the city with Sheila in tow. First up was Thomas Jefferson Memorial. Jefferson was a passionate student of architecture, and the monument dedicated to the third US president and principal author of the US Declaration of Independence certainly is an impressive one, constructed in the neoclassical style. It looks similar to the Pantheon with a rotunda, and is built right on the shore of the Potomac River. Walking up the marble steps to the exposed interior, we saw the bronze statue of Jefferson as well as many of his quotes inscribed inside. The memorial is looking across the River at the National Mall, which is home to numerous memorials and monuments, the Smithsonian museums, and public spaces for recreation and events. One of the most overt monuments we could see across the river was included Washington Monument, with its towering obelisk obvious in the distance.
Next we crossed to the other side of the river, visiting the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, which is made up of the "Stone of Hope," a massive granite statue of MLK, which was inspired by his famous "I have a dream" speech. His statue stands in front of 2 other pieces of granite that symbolize the "Mountain of Despair," where visitors figuratively "pass through" the latter before the "Stone of Hope," moving through the struggle as Dr. King did during his life. The memorial opened in 2011 and while it's not the first memorial of an African American in Washington DC, he is the first African American honored with a memorial on or near the National Mall and the 4th non-president to be memorialized in such a way.
Arriving at the National Mall, we stopped at the World War II Memorial, dedicated to Americans who served in the armed forces and as civilians during that war. The memorial consists of 56 granite pillars, decorated with bronze laurel wreaths, representing U.S. states and territories, and was opened in 2004. Lisette had been to DC for work years ago during the Veteran's Day holiday, and there were wreaths being laid here at that time to commemorate those who had battled and lost their lives during the war.
The outside of Lincoln Memorial was packed, with folks lining the area to take photos around the National Mall, and people dressed for Dia de los Muertos, a Mexican holiday to celebrate loved ones who have died. We took turns to wait with Sheila, with the other person climbing up the flight of steps leading to the neoclassical style Memorial, which was just as busy inside with people looking up at the statue of US president Abraham Lincoln seated regally in his chair. On either side of Lincoln's statue, there are two of his most famous speeches inscribed on the walls: one of the Gettysburg Address, and the other of his second inaugural address.
By the Water in Washington DC
We left the National Mall to ride out to the Watergate Hotel, which will be forever connected to another US president, Richard Nixon, but not for the best reasons: one of the suites was broken into, which led to the "Watergate" scandal and Nixon's resignation. Today, the hotel embraces this history, with the "Scandal Room" and other thematic touches. While we didn't go into the hotel, we did like the avant-garde architecture of the hotel, with its wavy structure and lovely grounds.
We headed back to the waterfront, checking out the Scarlet Natural Chaos sculpture, a vivid and contemporary by Belgian artist Arne Quinze--passing by the Icelandic embassy, set further away from Embassy Row, but clearly winning with its amazing view! Another cool sculpture nearby is called Mother Earth, a thought-provoking sculpture that's designed to feature 2 faces--one with solid steel, the other emerging in negative space--representing the urgency to protect our planet.
Hipster Georgetown
We soon arrived at Georgetown, first arriving at the Chesapeake And Ohio Canal Historical Park that made us feel we had been transported to Amsterdam. Michael felt like coffee, and a quick online search surfaced a Blue Bottle Coffee store close by. Georgetown was incredibly busy, as it was a weekend and it felt like everyone was out and about shopping, dining and hanging out on the main street. We can always tell by looking at the stores what kind of demographic and neighborhood it is, and this was clearly a very hipster place (think: Everlane, Allbirds, Vuori, Away... interestingly, all West Coast brands, as well as lots of organic cafes and bougie restaurants).
While we were initially happy to go to Blue Bottle and grab a coffee from a familiar brand that we liked, this excitement soon dissipated as we saw how incredibly long the line was! But Lisette still got in the queue for the restroom and then the cafe, and unsurprisingly, it took an inordinate amount of time to get Michael's coffee order. It was good, but not sure it was worth the long wait.
Fueled by caffeine, we got to Georgetown University, although we got lost trying to find Riggs Library, dating back to 1898 as one of the country's great old book shrines, with 4 floors of cast iron walkways and 2 spiral staircases. Despite being a Saturday, there were quite a few students hanging out on campus, and Michael went into one of the other libraries on campus to ask for directions, but surprisingly the student at the front desk had no idea what we were talking about! We ended up finding it inside one of the most striking buildings on campus, but the library was unfortunately closed, and we later found out that it isn't open for visits or general use (it's used more now as an event space). We've always enjoyed touring university campuses because they're so grand and gorgeous, but perhaps if we had known that Riggs Library was off limits, we'd have skipped the visit!
On Huge Blocks
Unfortunately, our trend of visiting closed places continued during the government shutdown, with the Renwick Gallery (part of the closed Smithsonian and once called the "American Louvre") also being closed. We knew we couldn't get into the White House of course, but we snapped photos, including a selfie as close to it as possible, navigating around the protestors, folks selling Trump souvenirs, and tourists simply there to take pics like us.
We rode back to our RV, whizzing past the National Mall again to snap photos closer to Washington Monument, while feeling grateful that we were exploring the city on e-bikes, because Washington DC is actually huge! There are so many places to see, and so many buildings are gargantuan, sitting on huge blocks of land that would have taken us hours and hours in comparison to visit if we were on foot. Since parking wasn't allowed overnight at where we'd initially parked, we took our chances and drove back over the bridge to downtown DC, and it turned out to be relatively easy to find a spot, on a quiet street across the road from the Museum of the Bible (wow, there's museums for so many things!), where we could stay for the night.
A Busy Saturday Night
We decided to eat out for dinner, since we had a lot of yummy options in a city like Washington DC! It was a 20 minute walk or so to The Wharf, where we checked out Jessie Taylor Seafood and the Municipal Fish Market, which are both seafood store where people can buy catches to cook at home or eat at the open air, waterfront counters. The stores were all lit up, showcasing the massive prawns, wide array of fish, crab legs, and other seafood that people were lining up to purchase. We had come to this part of The Wharf first in case we were attracted to any of the seafood, but decided to keep wandering up the waterfront towards the entertainment area, where there were plenty of other restaurant and food options.
The Wharf became even busier as we walked along, where we saw lots of folks taking photos by the waterfront, and we saw more food stalls and restaurants ahead of us. We saw a statue of a man kneeling to catch a lobster, which was kind of odd because we had seen that in Maine and Washington DC isn't really known for this crustacean, but it turns out that this Lobsterman sculpture was a gift from Maine--we're certainly more familiar with the foods of different states and regions now on this trip!
For some reason there were a lot of groups of young girls who were all running around wearing short shorts or skirts, tank tops and cowboy boots, who were looking very cold! We didn't know if they were all part of a sorority or what the occasion was, but it turned out that there was a Ty Myers concert at The Anthem, an entertainment venue at The Wharf, and we saw an lengthy queue snaking its way around, which was getting steadily longer as more people hopped into the line. We didn't actually know who Ty Myers was since we don't really listen to country music, but we looked his name up as we passed and given the spate of cowboy boots, fringed jackets and hats, it checks out that this is the genre of music playing!
Because it was a Saturday night, there was a festive energy at The Wharf, with Latin music blasting at an enclosed outdoor area to also celebrate Dia de Los Muertos, and we were battling crowds in both directions, where we were practically rubbing shoulders with folks as we wandered along--it was that jam packed. Sheila wasn't loving the crowds or noise surrounding her, but fortunately we were seated quickly at JINYA, a ramen bar that we soon found. We were seated outside, but there was a clear plastic enclosure around us that shielded us from the crowds, and somewhat stunted the outside noise.
Lisette ordered a vegan ramen which was pretty good, and Michael was eager to order a spicy ramen. When the waiter came to take our orders, Michael asked which ramen was spicy, and the waiter asked what level of spice he wanted, from a scale of 1-10 (10 being the highest). Michael asked for a level 8 since most of the places we'd been to on this trip have needed him to ask for "extra" spicy or go up a notch or two as the level of spice isn't enough. But when his ramen came, it was swimming in chili, and was a vibrant, or let's even say angry, red color! Well, it turned out to be way too spicy even for Michael, and unfortunately he couldn't finish it.
It was a cold evening, but we had full and warm bellies as we walked back to the RV, swapping the party vibe of The Wharf for the quiet side street where we'd parked. There was another RV that was parked near us for the evening, which we tend to appreciate, as we know there's fellow campers near us.