Travels In Washington D.C.

I found of couple of minutes to write this post.

I'm currently soaking in the beaches of Delaware, but prior to arriving here, we visited Washington D.C. for a couple of days.

The perception of Washington, naturally, is that it's a government town. True enough, but it's also what I regard as a world class town. It reminded me of Boston but with a southern twist. The amount of amazing things and places to see puts it right up there with any of the great cities in the world.

Driving in D.C. is not easy, something about the state of Virginia confusing things thus dividing the town into northeast and northwest divisions. It takes some getting used to. Which is why, if you're visiting for the first time as we were, take the trolley around to get a sense of things.

We stayed in Georgetown so we were a little far from all the main monuments and the trolley, though a tad expensive ($35 per adult, $18 per child over three) well worth it. Two trolley's (the one we chose anyway - I forget the name) take you through two different routes.

Two days in Washington is simply not enough. I couldn't get to most of the monuments and had to settle for the more popular ones. Next time I visit, I plan to hit, among others, any of the Smithsonian museums, the Library of Congress, Arlington Cemetery, Capitol Hill which was closed and Jefferson Memorial.

From what I was told, Washington underwent quite the face lift. For example, the area around Ford's Theater (where Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth) was run down once upon a time. Now, it's been re-done and is decorated with hip cafes and the sort. Though it makes you wonder about what we lose in terms of a rustic heritage when we clean things up.

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For our first stop, we decided to get off at Union Station. Not knowing the city, and being close to lunch, we figured why not just eat at the Union Station food court? Next, we went to Lincoln Memorial. It was quite the majestic experience walking up the stairs towards a marble sculpture of Abraham Lincoln sitting in his chair. To the left and right of him are two of his famous speeches engraved on the walls; The Gettysburg Address and Emancipation Proclamation. Like people around me, I simply absorbed the Lincoln legacy; the man who saved the union.

With time working against us, we visited both the Vietnam and Korean memorials.

If one wants to get a human feel for the toll Vietnam exacted on the American psyche, a visit to the memorial is a must. As I walked along staring at the names with no faces; of people I didn't know, the sheer numbers slowly began to overwhelm. You could tell who were the family members of a lost one as they stood in front of a name or placed their hands on it with their heads down or laid down a wreath.

At one point, a discreet crew were filming a lady and I over heard her say, "he was my mother's first cousin. I used to play with him when I was a kid." Right then and there, it hit me about the lasting memories and scars wars leave on people. Imagine the stories left behind the Great Wars!

Fully entrenched in American political folklore, we hopped on the trolley and headed to The White House (we applied to visit it over five weeks ago but our embassy never heard back from the TWH) and hung around Lafayette Square and watched people engaging in their various causes.

It was nice to see people do still believe in democracy.

America, is a runaway democracy in that it's getting farther and farther away from the reach of the people. Of course, they're not alone. Europe (and Canada) has essentially given up on freedom and individual liberty opting for a massive government structure to watch over their lives. Interestingly, most of the comments I heard over and over by almost everyone was their concern about where American democracy is heading. The expansion of government, it turns out, isn't just a concern of this blog but of people close to the pulse of the world's most powerful nation.