Washington DC May 2017 - Day 5 The Capitol and the Library of Congress

[sueandco]

So today I had booked us tickets to tour the Capitol Building, there is a visitors center that anyone can visit but to take the tour you need tickets which they recommend getting in advance although they do issue tickets on the day if there is availability.

We arrived early so spent some time taking photos of the outside of the building

Then DH left me sitting on a bench whilst he went police car hunting as apparently the Capitol has it's own police force - he found lots. Once he returned we had some water (it was another very, very hot day) before heading to the visitor center. Once there we found that there was a massive queue going all the way up some steps (far bigger than any other queue we encountered on the holiday and that includes at the airports). After speaking to the security guard I was directed to sit to one side with instructions to join DH once he got to the front, in fact although it was very long it did keep moving as they let 20 people in at a time fairly frequently, in all it took about 20 minutes to get to the front. As with all the buildings there was airport style security to get in. Once in you are upstairs with the gift shops and rest rooms and then downstairs there is a huge hall with all the various queues and lots of statues with various exhibition rooms off of it. There were two queues for people wanting tickets, four for those with tickets wanting to exchange them and then then two for enquiries. In the middle of the hall were two further queues which you had to go to five minutes before the time on your badge - the people manning this were very strict about not letting you in even a minute early. These queues were then filtered in to the theatre for a short video at the start of the tour. For the tour itself you are given a headset so that you can all hear the guide above the general noise.
Basically you are taken to various areas and the guide tells you all about how the system works with two senators per state but with a variable number of representatives depending on the size of the state with a maximum of 435. Whilst there are a huge number of tourists it is a working building and as we headed to the dome our guide said if we looked to the right we would see Paul Ryan's office, so we did and as we went past he came out of his office flanked by two secret service agents to head to the house. Sadly DH wasn't quick enough to get his photo. The guide also tells you about the dome and all the works of art. Each state is allowed to send two statues of people that represent their state and these are displayed in various places.

Although not terribly long the tour is very interesting. After we had planned to head to the cafe for a drink and a cake but the queues were horrendous so instead we headed to the gift shop (we bought two engraved glasses) and then took the underground tunnel to the Library of Congress.

They have free tours periodically and as we got there they had just closed the 2pm tour and the next one wouldn't be until 3pm. We decided to look around on our own and grabbed a map, we headed up to the top floor first and when we got there the first thing we got to was the mosaic and someone was talking about it. When he finished the group were heading up to the reading room overlook, as this is upstairs he said for all those that needed the lift to follow him and the group split another member of staff was there and told me I needed to follow him to get the lift we started to say that we weren't actually part of the group but she said it didn't matter go with him anyway. This we did and after a few minutes up there he said to go back down and he would tell us some more as it is silence in the reading room.

We then stayed with the group which was obviously part of the 2pm tour for the rest of it (we only missed the first thing which was his talk about the mosaic). As it happened various other people drifted off at different points so we ended up as part of a very small group! It was again a very interesting tour so I am glad we managed to join it.

As we still hadn't had a drink we picked up some water in the gift shop and not only was the cheapest we had (other than the multipack from the supermarket) at $1 but it had a dedicated label with a picture of the library on it.

DH wanted to stop off at the George Washington University metro stop at some time since they had there own police force so as it was quite early I suggested we do it today, I also wanted to pop in to T J Maxx as when I bought my baseball cap the other day I had seem some nice shopping bags but hadn't wanted to carry them round all day. I got five each in a different design and we also picked up some more cold drinks, I then popped in to Walgreens for some blister plasters. There was a market going on on the road to the University so I sat on a bench with my coke and people watched whilst DH went off police car hunting (he found some as he always seemed to do on this trip).

Back on the Metro and we headed back to Clarendon and tonight we decided to eat at Whitlow's on Wilson. Once again there just happened to be happy hour

Service was quite slow, our server was good but he had also been given a large table (about 12 people) each of whom was ordering separately and wanted substitutions from the main menu and then each of whom paid separately!

I had the club sandwich which came with fries and on a Wednesday was on offer at just $5

and DH had something that I don't recall the name of but was spicy with a mix of lots of things

he said it was very nice.

Total spends today $72.87

[KK_Cat]

We didn't get to visit either the Capitol or Library of Congress on our visit, very interesting! I have to go back some of these days. Thanks for posting.

[miss_bell]

Another great day, I'm looking forward to the Capitol tour.

Also finding it useful to see how much you have spent each day, we will be using the metro during our visit, maybe a little shopping, so only meals to budget for.

[fa$$a]

Thank you for all this great info xx I'm loving the report