DC day 3: monumental error

Today I got up late and failed to get to the Washington Monument in time to get a ticket; they were all out by 10:30. So I went to the Natural History Museum, which was my plan anyway while I waited for my time to go the WM. After an exhausting couple of hours there seeing my fill of trilobites and buying the Hope Diamond for my mother, I walked over to the White House and shot it in full sun.

By this time, my back was killing me because, over the past twelve years as a technology consultant, my back muscles have been replaced with Hostess cream filling (I can explain the process and cost benefit with a PowerPoint presentation and Excel spreadsheet).

Nevertheless, I stopped in and toured at the Latrobe-designed Stephen Decatur House (great call, John). It's in the process of being restored to its early-19th-century origins; thankfully, the first thing they restored was Latrobe's kick-ass air-conditioning; you would have thought it was a meat locker. It's an unusual house in that the kitchen is up front, as in a modern house, and the entertaining rooms are upstairs. It has the same in-frame shutters that the White House once had. And, authentic to its period, the front lamps are lit by gas and no photography is allowed inside—altho woodcuts and scrimshaw are presumably okay.

Then I cabbed it over to the Spy Museum, which was way better and more popular than I had imagined. It's built into a storefront and doesn't look like much from the outside but is designed very compactly, so there is a lot to see (but no photography!). The tight space adds to the atmosphere of espionage (as does the rampant, surreptitious camera-phone use), and the exhibits are very well done. Of course, at $16 a head and patrons streaming in and out for the full extended-hour day, they can afford to make it really cool. By the way, if anybody asks, my name is Billy Henderson; I'm a 14-year-old American student here in London on vacation for 9 days, and I have always had a mustache and a limp.

Oh, and Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum just opened with—I kid you not—lines around the block. I shot it after it had closed and the lines were only half-way around the block. It's a pretty cool exterior design, with all the glass, altho I think they missed an opportunity to do a Nighthawks/Boulevard of Broken Dreams take with JFK, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis, and James Dean.

Washington DC

Today I toured the Capitol and the Air & Space Museum and took pictures of the LOC and Supreme Court buildings. I'll upload all my trip photos to a gallery and post a link when I get a chance.

The Capitol was interesting; it was a weird combination of palace and rabbit warren. I took several pictures, but the best is the one everyone takes: the Apotheosis of Washington in the ceiling of the Rotunda. Man, I gotta get a rotunda.

Then I visited the White House Visitor Center, which was a real disappointment. I knew there wasn't much there, but really... I was shocked to find that it was barely more than a rather poor gift shop (altho it's in a beautiful space in the side of the Commerce building). There were a few pieces of White House furniture, a few pieces of old plaster moldings, one nice 1801 model of the WH, and lots of big photographs. In the corner, they had a couple of TVs playing one of the WH documentaries. Not bad, mind you; just disappointing.

It's unseasonably hot and humid this weekend and things are a little more spread out than I thought, so getting around is tiring. I haven't seen too many of the trolleys or tourmobiles, so I didn't get a pass for those. I've taken a few taxis, which are plentiful.

I'm too dumb to have brought a backpack to carry stuff, so I haven't bought much. What else? Umm, sodas are cheap on the street. It's a good-looking city, which frankly surprised me. There are a lot of German tourists. Cops are everywhere, and they seem to be attached to different departments. They all have their own metal barricades that say "Property of the Supreme Court Police" or whatever. Apparently, they're afraid that other cops are going to steal their barricades.

UPDATE: Went out after dark again and snapped the WH (tripods not allowed on the WH side of the PA Ave, by the way), the inside of the Jefferson Memorial, FDR Memorial, and Vietnam memorial. Somehow I missed the Korean Memorial in the dark, but I did see the signpost from MASH in the American History temporary exhibit in the Air & Space Museum, so that's something.

I can't believe how dark it is around the memorials. Half the street lamps are out and the others are so dim you have to use the light from your cellphone to find them. Even at nearly midnight there was a crowd at the Vietnam Memorial; it was so dark that it took several tries before I got a nice pic, and the crowd had emptied out.

Directions...

As the site grows, I’m trying to decide how best to present information without it becoming overwhelming. The White House site divides their room coverage into “Life in the Red Room” and “Red Room Art and Furnishings” and so on. But this seems kind of awkward to me, especially since pieces get moved around from one administration to the next. The White House site is mainly concerned with the rooms as they are today, with smatterings of history to make it interesting, whereas I want to allow people to see how the White House has changed over the decades. Still, the old Cabinet table with locking drawers currently in the Treaty Room is perfectly worthy of a bit of attention on its own, let alone the Lincoln bed and Resolute desk.

As a corporate training consultant, I’m also considering how to turn the site into more of a structured educational experience, with teaching aids and quizzes or whatever, so teachers can use it directly in their history lessons.