My first impression is that Washington DC is Paris 2.0. Museums, malls, gardens, hotels.
Not all the lights were working at the WW II Memorial. But I did see people working so our taxes dollars are working.
Fords Theater
There are something like 30 Smithsonian museums all of them free and all of them spectacular. It’s impossible to see them all in one trip. I had way too much fun at the natural history museum. It occurred to me that I am not sure how many members of Congress take a moment to walk down the street and check out the science knowledge that exists here. Because some of the rhetoric on both sides of the aisle sometimes doesn’t jive with what’s going on inside the Smithsonian. But hey it’s a free country. But the knowledge one can learn for free from this one museum is mind blowing.
like we evolved to be taller and skinnier with a short digestive track due to the consumption of meat. There is a cost benefit to eating meat and humans evolved our anatomy to match the higher risk higher reward of hunting meat vs foraging for veggies.
There are thousands of these factoids in this one museum. Fascinating knowledge I did not know.
I thought this statue of Darwin was pretty cool.
this totem pole was pretty cool. I like to think of political correctness as a totem pole. Because The Native Americans in the State of Washington would make them, and there’s this here in in DC. So my metaphorical scale of how pc someone is based on a totem pole fits.
As for the people of DC they were all incredibly nice and helpful much like people from all over the USA. As i was walking by a subway station in Chinatown There was a guy with a microphone on a soapbox who was preaching racism apparently in his version of religion heaven is only filled with Black, Hispanic, Asian, and Native American people and hell is full of white people. Me and the other random white people just walked by and crossed the street.
As we crossed the street there was a group of regular African American women doing the lords work saying to every white person who walked by that “Jesus loves you” and “God Bless.”
It’s a free country and I support the soap box people’s right to free speech in a public space. It’s also not government’s job to pick and choose a religion or speech.
individually we can be whatever religion we want and I went to enough Catholic masses as a child to just think of the soap box people as some lost souls who got the Bible mixed up. And that the path to healing is forgiveness.
There was also a cop nearby the subway station watching the situation. Just in case sticks and stones started flying. But as the cliche goes they were just words and they can’t hurt me.
DC is a very photogenic place. The mall is at an angle from the Potomac making everything just a little off center. I’m standing directly in front of the center of the Capitol building just below the stairs and I can see the pond in front, the Washington Monument, and Lincoln memorial. Enfant nailed it back in the day and the surveyor was a free wealthy(ish) black man by the name of Benjamin Banneker who did a wonderful job laying out the location of the Capitol and the topography of the area. Making it the best city on earth to photograph.
this was also spectacular like everything else in the District of Columbia.
This is the Veterans Memorial Bridge which is the entrance to Arlington cemetery. Built in 1932 these statues were erected in 1950 and were a gift to the USA from Italy. So thank you Italy.
a FlixBus back to NYC and a train ride later and I’m back to where I’m staying.
I did about another 20k today so 60k steps in 36 hours in DC is not so bad. My body is sore but I loved every step.
Walking is the best way to get to know a city you miss out on vistas while sitting on a subway train. But there are some things that is just too far to walk to. Here is my weekly total. 62 total miles.
