We took a road trip to Washington DC all the way from St. Louis, Missouri. It is a long drive --- almost 15 hours long --- and we took a night-halt at Charleston after driving on plains for 9 hours with brief stops for light meals. The roads were well-maintained, the view beautiful (the post-spring verdure was breathtaking), and the weather ideal. It is summer for everyone else, but for a visitor like me, who is used to a 40oC summer,18-24 degrees feels mostly pleasant but for a nip-in-the-air-feeling at times. My children joke that I tend to feel a little cold because age is catching up with me.
After our night-halt, we left Charleston post-breakfast, around 10 am, and drove via Maryland. The route was hilly, often winding up and down, and quite picturesque. It was here in Maryland, that I suddenly fell sick and had to call for emergency services. Help arrived in no time to everyone's surprise and relief, and everything was taken care of. I was told that this had happened due to multiple factors --- exertion, lack of proper sleep, low oxygen levels at height --- to name a few. It must have been an agonizing experience for my children, but it has established our faith in the 911- service of the US, once and for all. God bless my children --- they kept their calm and had the presence of mind to call for help. Thank you, reader, for bearing with this detour.
After medical aid and some rest, we proceeded with our journey to Washington. It was already dusk and we had to let go of a couple of sight-seeing places planned for that day. We did manage to halt at the `Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima' Memorial before retiring for the day. This memorial was built to commemorate the historical raising of the American flag on Mount Surbachi, during the battle of Iwo Jima in World War II. Designed on the basis of a very popular photo taken at that moment, it depicts five marines and a navy corpsman raising the flag.
After much needed rest, we started our next day as early as possible but, thanks to the cab-driver (reminds me of our Indian taxiwallas) who took a long-ish route, we were at the Washington National Mall only by early afternoon. The national mall is an open-area park in downtown Washington that stretches from the Lincoln Memorial on one end to the US Capitol on the other. It encloses other structures such as the Washington memorial and the WW II memorial. It was developed to provide a monumental, architechtural and dignified arena to the national museums, gardens, buildings and monuments housed in that area.
Although, due to limited time, we could visit only a few of the many important buildings in downtown Washington, we did manage to admire, albeit briefly, many of them from the outside while walking from one monument to another. We saw the buildings of the National Museum of American History, the Museum of Natural History and of American Indians, the Supreme Court and various other parks and art museums.
The Lincoln Memorial was built in honour of President Abraham Lincoln and lies on the west extreme of the National Mall. The building is designed in the Greek style and has a huge seated statue of Lincoln. It has, inscribed on its walls, two of his famous addresses --- the Gattysburg letter and his second inaugural speech. The building has since given platform to some famous speeches, Martin Luther King's `I have a dream' being one of them.
Between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument towards the east, lies a large Reflecting Pool that is flanked by trees on either sides. There was no water in the pool that day, unfortunately, but with water in it, it must reflect the two monuments on its extreme ends and the trees on its sides very beautifully, I believe.
In the Constitution Gardens, south-east of the Lincoln Memorial, is the Korean War Veterans Memorial constructed to honour the US service members who fought and served in the Korean war. It is a long triangular garden with a cluster of thick trees at the base of the triangle, and statues of soldiers coming out of the trees, walking towards an American flag, depicting the home-coming of the soldiers.
From this memorial we walked in the garden alongside the Reflecting Pool to reach the World War II Memorial which also lies in the Mall between the pool to its west and the Washington Monument to its east. It was made to honour the American Military and the civilians of the WW II period. It has a series of pillars and a couple of arches standing in a circle surrounding a huge pool with fountains. The close-to-perfect symmetry of the whole place gives it an awe-inspiring effect.
With no time to spare, we moved on to the next, very imposing monument that had not escaped our view even once during our walk in the mall --- the Washington Monument. This is one of the many monuments dedicated to President George Washington. Made of marble and granite, it is an obelisk which was founded in 1848 and could be completed only in 1884. It is the tallest stone obelisk in the world and was the tallest monument before the Eiffel tower was completed in 1889.
After a short break for lunch, we decided to visit the the National Gallery of Art. My daughter and son-in-law had already been to this place during their earlier visit to DC, but they liked the place, it's collection and display of art so much that they did not mind seeing it again. And why not? After all, who would not like to be in the august company of great works of art by stalwarts like Piccasso, Van Gogh and Tiepolo, to name a few? The gallery consists of two inter-connected blocks --- the under-ground East building with modern art and sculpture, and the West Building housing different collections of American and European art. The collection consists of art pieces donated by various art connoisseurs, the only painting in America by Da Vinci and the world's largest mobile sculpture by Alexander Calder.
We were really tired by the time we came out of the art gallery and appropriately chose the adjacent Sculpture Garden to relax. Inside, the garden has an array of modern sculptures displayed all around among trees and flower-beds. As we returned to our hotel, we noticed beautifully painted houses with traditional facades in the city.
On the fourth day, i.e., the penultimate day of our trip, we started still earlier as we had visitors' passes to Capitol for the 12 am slot. We had more than a couple of hours at our disposal before this, which we used to see the Washington National Cathedral or the Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul. The church lies in the west-north quarter of the city and to reach there we had to pass through the extremely beautiful diplomatic area that houses a number of foreign embassies and foreign diplomats' official residences. The place had a very calm and serene atmosphere with so much greenery on both sides of the avenues and the sloping front-lawns of the residences that it looked like a valley. Soon we were standing in front of the cathedral.
The height, size and the design of the church made us stand in total awe for some time. It is the sixth tallest church in the world and the second tallest in USA. Inside, the church is equally magnificant with mixed Gothic style, pointed arches and stained window glasses one of which is a space window signifying man's landing on the moon and holds a fraction of the lunar rock at its centre ( Pls see pic). The seventh storey is room to a viewing gallery from where you can admire a beautiful panoramic view of the entire city.
It was time to rush to the US Capitol as we did not want our alloted appointment to be cancelled. One has to report at the underground visitor center there before being allowed in for the guided tour. We were first shown a small film about the history of the building in the visitors' theater and afterwards, we were ushered in to a guided tour.
At the Capitol Square we saw the Peace Monument, the James S. Garfield Monument and the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial and in the process we missed the opportunity to go through the service tunnel to reach the Library of Congress. We walked down to the Mall and went to the library.
It was well past noon of the last day of our tour and we had to head back to St. Louis. We took a different route to Charleston this time to avoid the roller-coaster ride that had caused my sickness earlier. Our journey back was no less adventurous as we had to drive through miles of thick mist and no visibility. We were literally passing through descending clouds on the hills that gave the place a very ghostly effect and forced us to slow down to less than 20mph. This was a different experience altogether adding to our already full-of-incidents trip.
To have a visual journey, you may view this album -
