Evening Trolley Tour in D.C.

During our visit to Washington, D.C. last month, Melissa and I spent one evening on their Monuments by Moonlight trolley tour. It was a worthwhile experience and I recommend it to anyone stopping by there, especially first-timers...

First of all, we walked from our hotel just south of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, cut across the mall, and walked down Louisiana Avenue to Union Station, one of the must-visit places in town.  This grand work of architecture not only feeds into the city's Metro train line, but is also a major Amtrak depot, where travelers can easily board trains to northeastern cities.  Our trolley's location was easy to find once we entered the cavernous building, and we had a short dinner at one of their many food court eateries before getting in line for our bus tour.  Monuments by Moonlight uses several trolleys...I think we hit the jackpot with ours because of our excellent driver/tour guide, an elderly gentleman who calls himself "H.W.".  Our bus had windows with clear plastic hanging flaps for windows...helpful for protection against very cold conditions but an impediment to good photography, so we collectively decided to roll them all up and make it an open-air experience.  Starting in the eastern Capitol/Supreme Court Building/Library of Congress end of the Mall, we eventually wound our way around the various museums, monuments, and other sights (including loads of massive administrative buildings) with H.W. making incisive, interesting comments along the way.  When we came to the Lincoln Memorial, the trolley stopped and we all got off for a few minutes as we climbed the many steps to reach ol' Abe and shoot some pics.  Looking out we saw the Washington Monument past the Reflecting Pool and the distant Capitol Building beyond it.  Time constraints kept us from visiting the nearby Korean Memorial...instead we went for the famous Vietnam Memorial, not only catching the statues of the three soldiers but also the wall with the names of the fallen and a nearby stature dedicated to nurses in war.  After we reboarded, H.W. took us across the Potomac River into Arlington, a city with a towering downtown (unlike Washington, no height restraints for buildings there) and into the Arlington National Cemetery, where we somberly looked out the window at the seemingly endless rows of graves.  Then we made a brief stop at the Iwo Jima Memorial, a large beautiful statue recreating the famous flag-planting scene from that World War II Pacific battle.  Upon reentering the nation's capital, the trolley made one final stop, at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial...what a special experience that was, with many of Dr. King's great sayings inscribed into a wall and the juxtaposition of the Mountain of Despair with the Stone of Hope...and the Reverend's statue rising out of it.  And facing the King Memorial across an inlet was the Jefferson Memorial.  After getting back on the bus, we rode by the World War II Memorial and made our way to the area of town north of the Mall and east of the White House.  The White House was a major disappointment on this tour because it is now ringed by so many layers of security that we could only see it briefly, from a distance.  As we made our way back toward Union Station, H.W. pointed out the Trump International Hotel, Franklin D. Roosevelt's original very small memorial at a street corner, and the Newseum, among many other sights.  And then H.W. let us and a woman and her daughter out early before returning to the station, making our return walk back to the hotel much shorter and direct...what a class act!

After experiencing this tour, Melissa and I decided to spend the next day at the nearby (to our hotel) Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian, largely from H.W.'s intriguing commentary on the place as we rode by on our trolley tour.  But more about that in a different article.  If you're going to visit Washington D.C. for a few days, I recommend you first get on a tour trolley in order to give you a better sense of what's out there and to help you with your itinerary.  This particular tour, Monuments by Moonlight, was a great, memorable experience...