Washington DC, a lesson of history

We were very lucky in finding a CouchSurfing host in Washington. Karl, our CS host, sent me the offer to stay at his place when we were on the Greyhound bus to DC so it was a lastminute offer but it turned out to be a perfect one. Karl’s house is in Reston, a very nice little town near DC but in the state of Virginia. Karl is amazing, he has traveled all over the world and his travel-stories were amazing and because he’s a volunteer at the National Park Service, Washington  DC and for Traveler’s Aid he recommended us a lot of “hidden secrets”. He also does more sports than anybody that I know. If you guess his age from the pictures, you win a dinner when I’m back home J but I will not tell you his age if you miss because I promised him that.

Washington DC is the nicest capital I’ve seen and definitely in my favorite 5 cities. 37% of it are green spaces like parks and forests which is amazing for a capital. You have a lot of history here as every important president of the US has a memorial here and what’s nice about all the sightseeing points is that everywhere you have FREE guided tours, you just need to ask for them so you can learn a lot about the history of that place.

The most important sightseeing points that we visited are:

• The John F. Kennedy Memorial – Center for the performing arts. Here you have every day, 365 days/year FREE concerts starting at 6 PM. We were at one concert on the last evening and it was great.
• The Lincoln Memorial – this is the place where Martin Luther King Jr. held his famous speech “I have a dream”
• The Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial is a place with a lot of fountains and the place is really nice for a walk.
• The Washington Memorial is the famous statue that appears in almost every postcard of DC. It has a observation point at the top but due to an earthquake from last year it is unfortunately closed.
• The White House – this is really cool because you have the impression that nobody is guarding it but as soon as something happens you see a lot of policemen coming from nowhere. For example I started mounting my tripod to take some pictures and suddenly one told me in a very friendly way that it’s not allowed to use it.
• The theatre where Lincoln was shot and the house where he died.
• The Smithsonian museums – this is really nice as all the museums in DC are free and you have also free guided tours.

In Washington DC you can try out food from all over the world but I asked Karl to recommend me something typical for the city so on one evening we went to “Ollie’s Trolley” a typical American bar where we ate Crab Cakes. It’s like a sandwich with Crab meat and it’s very tasty. Because it’s also served with a ton of French fries which were also very tasty you can imagine that it’s a calory-bomb.

One amazing thing we’ve seen or done

There were two things that were amazing.

• The first one is Conchita, a lady who is living in a tent on the street in front of the White House since 1981 and protesting against the use of nuclear power and the effects it could have on humans. She’s very famous and if you go and talk to her she would ask you where you are from and hand you a newspaper from that country with an article about her. It’s really amazing that a person devotes her complete life for a cause like this.

• The second amazing thing we saw is the Arlington Cemetery. It’s the place where the soldiers who died in military conflicts starting from the Civil War till the war in Afghanistan are buried. Over 320.000 soldiers are buried here so it’s huge. The pictures don’t show the strange feeling that you have when everywhere you turn around and as far as you can see there are only graves. Here is also the grave of John F. Kennedy and the astronauts of the Challenger.