Visiting the President – Washington, D.C.

We arrived to Washington on wednesday afternoon by train and were fortunate in regard to our accommodation: We got a nice, large and tastefully furnished corner suite in the elegant Fairmont Hotel Georgetown - what a nice contrast to the rather dark, a little old-fashioned hotel room we had in Philadelphia! After check-in we left again for a walk in neighboring Georgetown, a quaint college town and sort of a world on its own, but it started to rain and therefore we returned to the hotel and had supper with provisions from the Reading Terminal Market in Philly in the room.

What a different city "D.C." is again compared to NYC or Philadelphia: very businesslike, buzzling and a bit rude. Not really "touristy", but rather a city you have to learn to love.

Thursday morning it rained hard, ugly misty rain combined with wind, till afternoon. Therefore we had to change our original plan to check out neighborhoods. Instead we concentrated on museums (which is really not difficult in Washington!) and started with the new White House Visitor Center. Many years ago we were fortunate and still able to visit the White House - nowadays not possible anymore for foreign visitors -, but the new center gives at least a good idea about what's going on behind the fence.


On to the Corcoran Gallery first (see pic), then we had a tour in the „Brewmaster’s Palace“, the Heurich House, the beautiful mansion of an interesting selfmade-man, a German immigrant who operated a brewery and had a "Bierstube" in the basement of his mansion (see pic). The National Museum of Women in the Art was, like the Corcoran, another museum, we have never visited before, though it’s our fifth visit to D.C.

The Museum of American Art/National Portrait Gallery was comparably overwhelming and we just cut through before heading to the National Museum of the American Indian (see pic). The café alone, with specialities from different regions/tribes, is worth a visit, but the exhibitions are spectacular as well as the architecture (see pic below).

Stopped by at the „Castle“, the Smithonian Institution Building (kind of the visitor center for all museums along the mall) and at least walked by a couple more museums along the Mall. Rain had stopped in the meantime and it was humid and warm. We took the subway (public transport is extremely expensive in Washington and really complicated to understand with its different tariffs, depending on day time and distance traveled) back to the hotel where we were picked up half an hour later by Alicia, our friend and contact at the Washington tourism office, to attend the Nationals’ baseball game (MLB).

We had good seats and it’s been fun, great atmosphere and a good game, too. The Nationals are already National League East Division Champions and will play in the play-offs starting next week. We had „bratwurst“ and a couple of local brews, and went to bed, tired to the bones with sore feet, at about 11 pm.