Work Travel to Washington DC

I returned last Saturday morning from a week long (short?) trip to Washington D.C. Unlike most times I travel, I was fortunate this time to get a little time off to head into the city and see the monuments as this was the first time I’ve been here. It was very impressive – if everything in the US is on a grand scale, Washington D.C. is no exception, the monuments and museums were all very impressive. I was also impressed at how well it’s laid out, it’s very easy and convinient for a tourist to get around. In around 3 hours I did a LOT, but to do it justice, you could easily spend four days here and not run out of things to see and do.

This is the “front” of the Whitehouse.

This is the more famous rear – it’s more photographed because this seems to be where the chopper takes off and lands when the president moves around.

Underneath the Washington Monument, looking over the World War II memorial and reflection pool to the Lincoln Monument (behind the columns at the back). This was the one monument I was keen to see closer, but didn’t have enough time unfortunately.

Beneath the Washington Monument, looking along the National Mall to Capitol Hill.

From Work Travel

The Washington Monument. It’s very tall!

This gives you a sense of the layout. I started at the top of the upside down “T” of green near the whitehouse, walked down to Washington Monument and then all the way to the right along the National Mall to Capitol Hill. For a sense of scale, from the start of the National Mall (near the red You are here arrow) to the Capitol Hill senate building (just out of shot to the right) is 1.6 Kms.

This is the Smithsonian Museum. Actually it’s only one of them, but it’s the original and now the information centre for all the other Smithsonians along the Mall.

The National Mall, with Capitol Hill on the left, and the Washington Monument to the right. All of these building are museums.

Looking across the mall towards the museum of natural history.

The queue to get into the Smithsonian Air and Space museum. I had time to see one museum and chose this one.

I found the whole experience awe inspiring as there are so many iconic items held in this collection. This is the actual rentry capsule used by John Glenn (first American to orbit the Earth) when he returned to Earth. It was really tiny!

This is SkyLab 2 – it’s an exact duplicate of the original SkyLab, built at the same time as a backup in case the first one was lost on launch. I remember when SkyLab burnt up on rentry over Australia.

This is the same thing, an exact duplicate of the Apollo Lunar Lander, built in parrallel as a backup to the first one (which obviously didn’t return).

The excercise equipment inside the SkyLab.

One of the Saturn Rockets from the Apollo missions – there were 5 of these that blasted the rocket into space. You can just make out the man on the left to give a sense of scale.

This is the original Starship Enterprise from the Star Trek series.All in all it was a very enjoyable few hours and has left me with an appetite to go back with Karina some time. Unfortunately all I had was the BlackBerry, so the quality of photos is a little less than perfect, but they give a good sense of the place I hope.