Washington, DC, Part 2
Seaduced
John & Jane Craven
Fri 16 Nov 2012 14:56
The Air & Space Museum is full of fascinating artefacts detailing the whole history of flight from hot air balloons, to modern passenger planes, as well as a lot of space related artefacts from both USA and Russia from the 'space race'. When we arrived, a tour was just about to start, so we followed along, this was a 90 minute 'whistlestop' tour of the museum, you could literally spend the whole day there! In the 'Pioneers of Flight' section, we saw the Wright Flyer, which is entirely original apart from the canvas on the wings, and the 'Spirit of St Louis' in which Charles Linbergh completed the first solo transatlantic flight in 1927. We saw British, American, and Japanese fighter planes in the WW2 section, and then headed into the 'Space Race'. Here they had the actual Mercury Spacecraft 'Friendship 7' in which John Glenn orbited the earth - it is tiny, smaller than a sports car, as well as the Apollo 11 Command Module which carried the first men to walk on the moon. There are also real decommissioned cruise missiles which are frighteningly huge and deadly accurate. Despite all this, we only saw a small part of the museum, 3 hours including an Imax 3D film on the origins of fight was enough education for one day. There is a much larger exhibition out at Dulles Airport, but that would have been too much!!
All that education had made us hungry so we headed to Union Station for lunch. This was built in the heyday of rail travel, and is a stunning building. Once the amount of rail travellers reduced, the station went into a bit of a decline. A huge restoration project was undertaken in the 80's and it is now part train station, and part shopping area, with various restaurants.
After lunch it was off to the Supreme Court. This a relatively new building, completed in 1935. Until then the Supreme Court had been held in a room in the Capitol Building, but the Chief Justice of the time, William Taft, who had also been President between 1909-1913, felt that a separate building was needed and he succeeded in convincing Congress of this and securing the $9.7million dollars needed to fund the project. The Court was in Session when we were in town and you can queue for seats in the public gallery either for the whole hour allocated to the case, there are two cases, three days a week, or for a three minute seat in the public gallery. Some cases are so popular, that people camp out on the plaza for days in advance to get in - needless to say, we didn't bother!
Georgetown is a popular area full of shops and restaurants at the other end of town where we spent the second night. It has a completely different vibe to areas around the Mall and the Capitol Building, much more relaxed and informal. We ended up eating in a small tavern, where various past Presidents have dined regularly, including JFK, who proposed to Jackie in Booth 3, now known as the Proposal Booth, as well as Lyndon B Johnson, and Harry Truman. It was also a favoured spot for spies meeting during the Cold War.
For our last day, we had saved the Capitol Building and the Library of Congress. We arrived and booked onto the tour of the Capitol Building which started with a short film about American democracy and the construction of the Capitol Building. It was finished in 1811, and burned by the Brits a couple of years later, along with many other important buildings in Washington. It was restored and opened again in 1819. As well as the Supreme Court, the Library Of Congress also started out life in the Capitol Building. Congress and the Senate were in session while we were there so we couldn't visit those rooms. It is possible, if you're American, to get tickets through your State Representative to go into the Chambers, but not so easy for us Brits!
We also managed to latch onto a tour of the Library of Congress, which again discussed the history and fabulous artwork. The reading room is unfortunately off limits without a pass.