One Dusty Track: D.C. Trip - Day 4 Cont. The Capitol

WE The Pizza - even our traveling troll loved it!

Traveling Trolls

After completing our most excellent tour of the Library of Congress this morning, we had just enough time to grab a bite of lunch before we had to be at Senator Pryor’s office to meet his staff and pick up our passes to tour the Capitol & the White House. We found 2 pizza places just down the street and chose the one named We The Pizza simply because they had something called a Greek Pizza that sounded interesting. A great choice because it turned out to be the best pizza we’ve ever eaten! I admit we were pretty hungry from walking around the Library of Congress all morning, but still, that was one exceptionally good pizza!

The Capitol Building

After getting lost for a while trying to find Senator Pryor’s office, we finally found the right corridor and met Adrianna, the Senator’s office manager and the person who had arranged our tours. What a wonderful person she is! Very nice and friendly, yet very professional. We visited for a few minutes and then she took us down a long tunnel the general population doesn’t know about and we boarded the underground tram the Senators use to get from their offices to the Capitol to make it to votes. It was like a little souped-up open train that took us from the Senate offices underground into the Capitol in no time at all.

Adrianna guided us to the visitor center in the Capitol and we walked around for a few minutes while she went to get our tour passes. No waiting in line for us – that kind of stuff is for the little people! For those who don’t know me, trust me, I’m joking. But it did make us feel kind of special. Unfortunately, dear Adrianna at this point had to leave us in a line waiting for a tour guide. Thanks for everything, Adrianna. You were great!

Lady Liberty Statue in the Capitol Visitor Center

There were 4 groups, each with their own guide. This is where things went sour in a hurry. It was our misfortune that we just happened to be in Group 1. Our guide, whom I’m sure was a Nazi SS Guard in her previous life, was extremely rude and acted like we all showed up simply to piss her off. She gave us headphones, but a couple of the folks in our group received defective ones. She acted like they broke them on purpose and it was a royal pain in her behind to get replacements. The other 3 groups went on and left us. Before we had gone around the first corner, our guide made us stop and listen to her demands speech for a good 5 minutes telling us we were to keep up with the group, never be more than 10 feet from her or our whole group would get kicked out, and for heaven’s sake, don’t dawdle as we didn’t have time for that. Before we start, does everybody understand? All of us ”prisoners” looked around at each other with a “what the…?” look on our faces.

Rotunda of the Capitol

For most of the next 15 minutes, what we generally heard was not interesting facts about the Capitol, but “Stay by me!” “Don’t dawdle!” “Come on, we need to hurry!” “This way, this way! We’re walking this way!” She was the exact opposite of the wonderful and excellent Janice at the Library of Congress that morning. This hag acted like she get’s paid by the tour and her mortgage is overdue. We returned to the starting point after a most disappointing and very short tour to find that although we had been the last group to leave by 10 minutes, we were the first back.

Most of our group stood around for a while talking about how bad our guide was, people went to the bathroom, and we finally left about 15 minutes after our guide dumped us off – and the other groups were still on their tours. As we walked away, I finally saw the next group slowly making their way toward us and they were all strolling along talking to their guide and smiling. Nobody in our group had smiled. Nobody. Not once. I hope that lady finds a new job soon!

The center of Washington, D.C. inside the
Capitol. All roads radiate out from this point.

We spent the rest of the day and into the evening walking around, looking at the monuments and buildings. We headed back to the hotel, stopping at Quiznos for a sandwich supper. A quick stop in the Starbucks located in the hotel lobby for a cup of decaf and we were finished for the day. We were tired, but looked forward to our tour of the White House. I wonder if we’ll see the Prez?