Mr Phil Goes to Washington

Because I love early morning travel so much, I headed out to Chicago's O'Hare Airport at 4.45am.  Thanks to a kindly United Airlines lady (or maybe she was just slack and didn't bother checking the scale), I managed to sneak in luggage that was 2.5lb over the official limit.  The flight was really good, it even arrived a few minutes early.  And what does one do in a new city?  Find some accommodation, of course.  This house seemed nice, but apparently the current tenant has it until 2016.

I was surprised at how close you can actually get to the White House.  This is at the back, which is a fair way from the house itself.  Obama has a big backyard.

And then you can walk around to the front, which faces Pennsylvania Avenue.  That section of the street has long been closed off to traffic, but you can still walk along it, reach through the fence with your camera, or indeed set up your anti-nuclear protest campsite if the spirit so moves you.

On the walk between the front and rear viewing positions I passed the Treasury Department, which is an impressive building in its own right (and huge, like all the other Federal department buildings).

I then went on a monumental walk.  Monumental first because I saw a lot of monuments, but also monumental in the sense that it took ages and was very tiring (and this was supposed to be my day of rest.  Oh well).  Anyway, when in Washington and looking for monuments, logic suggests that perhaps the Washington Monument might be a good place to start.  Alas, that iconic obelisk was shrouded from top-to-bottom in scaffolding, as a result of earthquake damage which is currently being repaired.  And I hate to lower the tone of this very dignified blog, but it has to be said - it looks like the thing is wearing a giant condom.

So anyway, that was disappointing.  Next stop is the World War II memorial, at one end of the Reflecting Pool.  It seemed to have a bit of construction work happening as well.

Then I walked the length of the Reflecting Pool, which looks like this, and leads us to our next stop, the Lincoln Memorial, ever a popular spot with tourists.

And here's Honest Abe now, sensibly reclining in the shade of his pavilion, surrounded by lots of nice cold marble.  The walls on either side are inscribed with the Gettysburg Address and the Second Inauguration Speech.

Downstairs is a little museum, mainly devoted to Lincoln's involvement in freeing the slaves.  I love this extract, and really enjoyed the Memorial as a whole.  Made me want to rent Lincoln and watch it again.

Moving along, moving along (so many memorials, so little shoe leather left).  Here we have the Korean War Memorial, which has a cleverly-designed granite wall, but the grey soldiers in the garden were a bit too over-the-top for my liking.  Australia did rate a mention though, which was exciting.

What next?  Oh, there's a Martin Luther King memorial, that doesn't look too far.  Of course it doesn't.  Nothing ever does on the map.  But anyway, it was worth the walk, this is the newest monument in this part of DC, and was opened in 2011.  It was very impressive.

Some of Dr. King's quotes are inscribed on the granite slabs surrounding the memorial; he also gets a lovely view across the lake.

By this stage, you're just as far in as you'll ever be out, so I figured what better way to go but forward?  And forward took me to the Franklin D. Roosevelt memorial.  It's quite a big, meandering memorial that covers a lot of ground and includes multiple statues, as well as some of FDR's famous quotes.

One bottle of gatorade and a hot dog later, I made it to the last stop, the Jefferson Memorial.  He lives in this little house down by the water's edge.

Now where to?  Oh, the train.  How far is that?  Oh, not far... only another 10 minutes walk.  Oh, the escalator down to the train station isn't working.  That's alright, I can walk.  I'm used to it by now :)