Postcards from Washington, DC…
We recently had to take a trip to Washington DC for personal reasons, and while at it, we thought of making some time to see the city.
I admit that DC wasn’t on my top places to visit list, hence I didn’t do any research on it, nor had much of an idea of what to expect. However, the areas that we saw totally charmed me — it’s a beautiful city with plenty to explore.
So, after finishing what was the purpose of our trip there, we hit the ground running. There were severe thunderstorms predicted for the afternoon, and we wanted to fit in as much as possible before those arrived.
Since we weren’t too far from it, we decided to first visit the Washington National Cathedral, the world’s 6th largest Gothic Cathedral. I personally didn’t know about it prior to visiting and was impressed. In my opinion, it rivals the ultra-famous Notre Dame — it is massive and not lacking intricate details or incredible architecture.
Fun fact: The Washington National Cathedral has a Darth Vader gargoyle, and you can read about how that came to be here. Another fun fact is that we weren’t able to spot it, even if there are signs outside explaining how to find it (we blame it on the strong sun right above it, and the fact that we didn’t have binoculars, haha…).
As we didn’t have a lot of time and wanted to visit other places as well, we went on to only explore the grounds — visiting inside requires a fee.
Note that parking was not available anywhere near, so we parked in the underground parking garage (which requires a fee). For whatever reason though, that day it was free, so that was nice.
I imagine that it gets busy during the weekend, but since we were there on a weekday, the place was mostly deserted, allowing us to explore at our own pace.
I imagine it looks incredible inside, and we’ll have to see it in a future visit.
From the cathedral, we crossed the street to find ourselves in the Bishop’s Garden.
For a plant and nature lover like me, this place easily marked the highlight of our trip. Being in this garden was an utter delight, and I would have spent the entire day there if I could… The scent of the flowers, the busy bees buzzing all around me, minding their business, as well as the butterflies flying under my nose made for an idyllic scene… There was so much peace there, and if I lived any closer, this would have definitely been my escape from the city, a good book, and a blanket being the perfect accessories. Cottagecore at its best, if you will…
*Don’t forget the bug repellent though — mosquitos were aplenty.
As we were running out of time, we decided to make our next and final stop at the National Mall, as we knew that it would require a few hours if we were to explore it all. Thankfully, [free] parking was abundant, and we parked by the Potomac River before we began our tour.
We visited all the monuments (minus the Jefferson Memorial) one by one, taking time to reflect on their significance. That part is inevitable when one faces these giants and the history associated with them.
As we finally reached the Lincoln Memorial, so did the predicted rain, putting a stop to our tour, and our trip to DC as we left the city shortly after.
Things to know:
Traffic is heavy.
There are some steep streets around DC — they reminded me of San Francisco.
Roads can be confusing, especially in traffic circles. Some have quite a few lanes so pay attention.
Gas stations aren’t as frequent, make sure you map them out so you don’t run out of gas.
