The White House

Of the possible tours, the one I really wanted was the White House tour. Its the one I didn't get. They said its really popular and the chances of getting it aren't nearly as good as the other ones. I have been on the tour a couple of times, so its not a huge loss, but a bit disappointing.

Today was at least a day to walk around the White House area. Today marks the third time I've gotten off the subway and walked in the wrong direction from where I wanted to go. I recover in a couple blocks, but they have long blocks in Washington and its already hot and humid, so we'll pay for that mistake later, but we trudge on. Seriously, having a compass in a big city would be very helpful at times.

We made a lap around the White House. There are other interesting buildings around it. One I hadn't seen before was the Blair House. They use it for visiting dignitaries, etc. Not being a dignitary myself, obviously I couldn't go inside, but it was interesting to see the building. Harry Truman stayed there when the WH was having major repairs done. They weren't called terrorists back then, but basically terrorists came toward the front door and got into a gun battle with a couple secret service agents on the sidewalk. Harry looked out the upstairs window to see what the commotion was and had to be tackled to protect him. As I recall both terrorists and one secret service agent was killed.

A nice thing about DC is that almost everything is free. However, nowadays every entrance has a metal detector. The only place that was a problem was at the WH visitor center. The security people there were rude/incompetent. That was weird because going through the security at the other places was a bit of a pain, but everyone was very polite and professional. And, there is very little in the WH visitor center that needed protecting. They had stuff like Andy Jackson's spittoon - very mildly interesting.

Aside from the WH, my favorite DC building is the American History museum. I spent a couple hours, but could have spent a couple full days. I don't care for the Natural History museum. I was there long enough to be trapped by eight million elementary kids shouting, "It's Dory!". There were fish that looked like him I'll grant you. However - First of all, that was a cartoon, kids, so it probably isn't him. Secondly, inside voices. Seriously.

After a full, tiring day of walking, caused, in part by my above mistake at start of the day, we had Cokes at the Watergate. Seriously, we did. It was fun. Feel free to insert your own joke. I know you're working on one.

At the end of the day, we took the subway to eat at, get this, "We the Pizza". It would have been tough to pass that up.