National Treasures

Stop one of the day today, the National Archives!  The building that houses the DC headquarters of the National Archives system is quite impressive, built in a classical style but with modern security and amenities.  The line to get in at opening wrapped around the block and it took 40 minutes to get in, I hoped it would be worth it since the founding documents of the US are housed within.

 

Before reaching the "crown jewels" of the collection we browsed an interesting exhibit on the results of the civil war and a good exhibit about how the millions of documents the archives holds are useful for research in a myriad of fields.  When it came time to go to the rotunda of the archives building to see the Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights in their massive armored cases.  This proved to be less interesting then I imagined it would be, too many people waiting to see them, too much security, and the documents themselves are not much better in person then their pictures.

Next on the agenda was a metro ride to American University for an appointment with their graduate admissions office and a walk around their campus on the outskirts of DC.  The DC metro is about standard for major city metros, though the stations are 1/4 as deep as those in St. Petersburg and not anywhere close to the beauty of those stations.  A short bus ride from the station to the campus later and we where at the beautiful suburban campus of American University.  It reminded me a lot of Chapman University in size, architecture and atmosphere.  The interview went well and I got a lot of good information, further concluding that their graduate program is not for me.

 

We rode the metro back downtown and set off on a 5 mile jaunt from the Washington Monument, around the tidal basin, to the Jefferson Memorial and through the FDR Memorial and back to dinner at an English Pub.  The FDR memorial was a real surprise for me, it was not marked on our map and I had not expected to find it.  When we did walk through it I was impressed by the overt and subtle imagery, the use of the space and conversion of a public park space into a still useful public space to honor the memory of the greatest 20th century president.  This part of my trip resulted in some of the best pictures of the trip:

  

 

I can't help but compare the sights and feel of DC to the many other cities I have had the pleasure to visit.  I think that I am a bit underwhelmed by some of the things here that I should be in awe of, but it is nice to finally see and visit all of the important sights here.  I knew DC was a fairly metropolitan place, but I guess I had not realized that parts of it truly fit the big city model.  Tomorrow is the US capital and the rest of the memorials on the national mall.