Some Reactions to Visiting Washington, D.C.

Our trip to Washington, D.C. last week made an strong impression on me...mostly favorable.  We as Americans truly have a very classy capital city, and we should all be proud of it...even if we're not too enamored with some of the elected politicians working there.  Here are a few of my reactions to the visit...

One of the things that immediately struck me as I began to walk the streets of Washington was the immensity of its buildings...everything there seems to be built on a grand scale.  Whereas in most major cities the downtown administration area is clustered with skyscrapers, our nation's capital city has an established ordinance that prohibits new buildings from exceeding in height that of the Statue of Freedom standing atop the Capitol building.  The result has many, many very long and wide government buildings and businesses sometimes occupying entire city blocks...and even going underground as well...

I live in Gainesville, Florida, and although the major intersections have pedestrian crosswalks with walk/don't-walk signals and numerical countdowns on the "walk" phase, it just seems dangerous crossing streets because...well, frankly a lot of drivers here either just don't look out for pedestrians and bicyclists or they act like they shouldn't be there.  In Washington, though, pedestrians rule: the intersections don't even have a button that crossers need to push, and they usually give a very generous amount of crossing time...

When Melissa and I got off the plane at Dulles International Airport in northern Virginia, we used an inexpensive bus line to take us to an outlying Washington Metro train station...we got on the Silver Line and it let us out just a short distance from our hotel a block from the Mall.  I have to say that I love the whole concept of the Metro...mostly underground...it's too bad that more cities refuse to invest in this sort of transportation that serves the people so well.  The only problem I had with it was that sometimes the entry points above ground are hard to find: Saturday morning, on the way back to the airport, we finally found our station while walking around in the rain after overshooting it and having to backtrack.  But yes, I really dig the Metro.  I also thought that Union Station, a few blocks north of the Capitol, was extraordinary...you can board Amtrak trains to other cities there as well as connect with the Metro and the architecture is stunning...

Well, that's some of my reactions to visiting Washington. More to come...