Best things to see and do in Washington DC. Photo / Getty Images
Best things to see and do in Washington DC. Photo / Getty Images
Washington DC attracts millions of visitors every year, but behind the iconic monuments and must-see museums, there’s a wealth of lesser-known gems vying for your attention, writes Helen Van Berkel
Here’s a question for you: in which state is the US capital city, Washington DC?
Answer: None. Washington, District of Columbia is a district that was carved out as the nation’s seat of Government from land that was previously in the states of Maryland and Virginia.
Washington DC is a deeply historic city that wears its past on its streets.
Its broad avenues are lined with monuments to the glory of the US Government: even the US Postal Service building is a colonnaded hark to the days before communication went virtual.
It seems every minor department has a temple to itself in downtown Washington: from the department of agriculture (once the largest office building in the world! according to my breathless hop-on/hop-off bus audio guide) to the grandeur of the US Bureau of Printing and Engraving – important when you realise it’s where US currency is printed – to the Federal Trade Commission.
Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington DC. Photo / Eric Dekker on Unsplash
The sometimes brutalistic architecture within the 10 square miles (about 26sq km) set up by the US constitution to be the seat of the US Government was the first thing I noticed when I set out for a walk from the Arlo Hotel on G St a few days after the inauguration of President Donald Trump. The streets are wide, eerily empty early on a Saturday morning. US flags hanging from every building front provide nearly the only colour on the fronts of unornamented concrete boxes, their facades broken only by uniform rows of square windows.
But among the dystopian sternness are whimsical beauties. Smithsonian museums – Washington has 17 of them – also dot the National Mall and environs and the most delightful of them in my eyes was the Smithsonian Castle.
World War I monument, Washington DC. Photo / Helen Van Berkel
Built in 1855, the castle is a Norman-style structure that was one of the first structures on the Mall, which runs from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial and the Potomac River. The castle is closed for renovations but each of the other museums in the district are worth a day to explore on their own.
As well as the world-acclaimed National Museum of Natural History, there’s the curvaceous National Museum of the American Indian, designed by native Americans to look like a rock formation that has been carved into shape by thousands of years of wind and weather, and the intricate facade of the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Three bronze-coloured tiers of lattice screen are a homage to the intricate ironwork made by enslaved African Americans in the southern United States.
I spent unintentional hours wandering the exhibition spaces of the National Gallery of Art, among Monets, da Vincis and Titians all hanging within arm’s reach. And I barely saw a quarter of the collection.
The Lincoln Memorial – Abraham in his armchair is much smaller than you’d think. Photo / Kelli Dougal on Unsplash
Washington DC does monuments very well and its Big Bus hop-on-hop-off tour is an easy way to quickly get the lay of the land and see the iconic structures. I stopped off at the Washington Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial – Abraham in his armchair is much smaller than you’d think - and at Arlington Cemetery. The manicured lawns where the US honours its war dead also absorbed fascinated hours as I took in the rows upon rows of small white headstones, each representing an individual who had fought and died for his or her country.
Originally, the cemetery was a 445-hectare plantation worked by enslaved African Americans. These workers also built the Arlington House mansion that was once home to controversial Confederate Army commander General Robert E. Lee and later a refuge for newly freed slaves fleeing north.
The Arlington House mansion at Arlington Cemetery was once home to Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Photo / Helen Van Berkel
I felt this history sitting uneasily on the property, which is also a memorial to George Washington and full of the first president’s memorabilia. The slave quarters still exist behind the mansion, giving a glimpse into a ghastly time in US history. Civil War dead were among the first to be buried here and it also contains the final resting place, marked by an eternal flame, of assassinated president John F. Kennedy.
Disappointingly, the other presidential home, the White House, was still closed and cordoned off after the inauguration, but a nearby visitor centre is almost as good. The model of the presidential home has small-scale dioramas of the White House’s famous reception rooms, including a recreation of the Oval Office where you can sit at the famous desk. Upstairs, an interactive display of important turning points in US history includes a debate with President Abraham Lincoln and his advisers as the southern states were threatening to secede from the Union. You can even vote: Lincoln took my advice and agreed to reprovision Fort Sumter, a focal point for the rebellion. And the American Civil War was under way.
A visit to the nearby visitor centre is almost as good as seeing The White House. Photo / Michael Schofield on Unsplash
But for all its fondness for majestic architecture and monuments to its heroic past, Washington DC is also home to nearly 700,000 people who live in a variety of eclectic neighbourhoods such as Georgetown. The suburb’s main street is lined with the kind of small-town American storefronts familiar from the movies and its residential areas are a feast of federal architecture, some dating back to the 1700s. Each rowhouse had a different front, either in style, colour or construction, and I spent far too long admiring almost every single one of them.
Georgetown is older than Washington DC and was originally a tobacco port, an important sending-off point for the world-famous Virginia leaf that was shipped off down the historic nearly 300km Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. The canal is now edged with cafes and factories converted into apartments, and hotels. It was pleasing to see that some of the world’s biggest hotel chains, such as the Marriott with its Canal House, had honoured the lovely little houses, repurposing them as almost stand-alone boutique accommodation, complete with original features such as the narrow stairways and brick walls. The canal has been partially drained to allow for repairs but in summer canal boats also ply the picturesque channel, which is edged by a towpath popular with walkers, cyclists and runners.
In Georgetown, each rowhouse had a different front, either in style, colour or construction. Photo / Getty Images
I’d begun my visit to Georgetown at the Dupont Circle market, where the inhabitants of Washington DC wander on Sunday mornings with their dogs and cups of coffee, buying fresh produce and all manner of artisan foods.
I had intended to walk from Dupont Circle to Georgetown but instead, because Google Maps is as bad as my sense of direction, ended up in Adams Morgan, an eclectic and artistic community at the opposite end of where I wanted to be. The vibrant community is named after the formerly segregated predominantly white John Quincy Adams School and the predominantly black Thomas P. Morgan School, which merged even before official desegregation in the 1950s. It is also a hub of LGBT culture in Washington and in my brief visit to this community I was drawn to its variety of multicultural restaurants and interesting street fronts. I could see there was much more to explore there but then I noticed that the time from my intended destination of Georgetown had doubled and something had gone horribly wrong with my navigation.
But now it was time to go inside and check out the atolla jellyfish at Artechouse, an innovative art space famed for its interactive art exhibitions.
Artechouse, an innovative art space famed for its interactive art exhibitions.
Artechouse is like nothing I’ve ever seen: the immersive exhibit of light and mesmerising music that takes you into the twilight zone of the ocean’s depths, home of atolla jellyfish and the weird and wonderful creatures that pulse and surge in the darkness. Twilight Zone: Hidden Wonders of the Ocean, lets you manoeuvre a virtual deep-sea sub so you can see what exists at the various levels of the ocean, each level weirder than the last. The exhilarating, animated Van Gogh-like lightshow is a non-stop swirl of colour that Artechouse calls “the largest migration on the planet”. It is also a warm indoor break on a winter’s day in Washington.
Winter is actually a great time for Kiwis to visit Washington: many locals I spoke to referred to the searing heat and humidity of the summer. But despite the season, Washington put on beautiful blue skies and sunshine for me and a day of snow was a glorious bonus.
