Sheila Claydon

Two days was nowhere near long enough to do Washington justice. The Smithsonian alone would take a week and we were just passing through, so how could we make the most of it? We elected to walk the city centre and then take a trolley bus tour.

Washington’s Old Town Trolley service did everything we needed.  It allowed us to swop between routes and hop on and hop off whenever we wanted.  On top of that each driver gave a running commentary, some more idiosyncratic than others.  There were no set speeches, nothing formal.  We learned quirky things alongside the basic stuff.  For example, did you know that the saying ‘mind your Ps and Qs’ is a leftover from the days when ships’ captains exhorted their crew to ‘mind your pints and quarts’ when they went ashore?  In other words it was a warning not to get drunk. That tidbit came from a driver whose father was in the US Navy.

Another driver slowed the trolley outside the White House and sang an ironic Star Spangled Banner to general applause.

We started our tour by visiting Arlington Cemetery.  The rows and rows of snowy white headstones reaching out of sight in every direction make far more of an impact than a war memorial ever could. While we were there we also stood in silence at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier for the changing of the guard. Later we visited John F Kennedy’s grave and saw too where Robert and Edward Kennedy are buried. We drove past the Pentagon as well. It is a vast grey structure that looked as impenetrable as it is meant to be and as I am sure it is.

Then came the history.  The Potomac River (the native word for market place). The Lincoln memorial, the Ford Theatre where Lincoln was shot, the house opposite where he died the following day.  The Jefferson memorial.  The Smithsonian Museum which stretched block after block.  The National Geographic.  The Crime Museum.  The Post Office Tower, which Donald Trump is about to turn into a hotel. The infamous Watergate Hotel. The Financial District.  The Treasury.  The IRS building.  The Embassies. All of them grandiose, all of them beautifully maintained.  Indeed the whole city was impressive from its parks and gardens to its wide, litter-free boulevards.

We saw the Vietnam War Memorial too, as well as memorials of earlier conflicts, and we were as touched by the cards and mementoes left behind by visitors as we were impressed by the number of school parties that were there to learn about America’s history.

Nothing was comparable to the White House though.  While this was smaller than I had expected, it was also more beautiful.  A graceful, elegant building set in acres of parkland, it looks as lovely from the back as it does from the iconic front view that is so familiar in every photograph.  And directly opposite it, and just as beautiful in its own way, the Washington Monument, a colossal obelisk erected in honor of George Washington as a national memorial.

So what am I going to remember about Washington?  As well as its elegant architecture and design I will remember its friendly citizens.  I don’t know if Washingtonians are actually as happy as they appear but we were favored with a lot of smiles and friendly conversations, something that made us feel that we were valued visitors.

It is a rainbow city too.  A place where people from every nation and of every color and creed  live and work together.  A place where the magnificent National Cathedral prides itself of welcoming worshippers of any and every denomination.

But more than all of this, one simple thing will forever remain in my memory: a cyclist wearing lycra and a helmet speeding down a path towards the White House with his dog strapped into a rucksack on his back.  It was a very relaxed and happy looking dog too. With its tongue lolling it had a real grin on its face.  It was a dog who was so familiar with its ride that it had its arms (surely they weren’t front legs, not in that position) wrapped around its owner’s neck.

That unexpected and amusing human/canine partnership will forever be what first comes to my mind when I think of Washington. Why? Well because it is the people who make a city, not the history, important as that is. It is the day-to-day lives of its citizen that carry it forward. It is their hopes and dreams that keep it dynamic. It is their labor that makes it work. I’ll never know why that cyclist decided to train his dog to backpack, all I do know is that the pair of them brought a smile to the face of everyone who saw them, and left everyone feeling just that little bit better about themselves and about the world we live in.