One Dusty Track

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?

National Statuary Hall - Yes, you really can
hear a whisper from across the room!

World's Worst Tour Guide - if you get her as
your guide, quick jump to another group!

Cold early morning walk to Library of Congress.

The message I want to share today is short and simple - If you go to Washington, D.C., take a tour of the Library of Congress. Do not even think about leaving without doing this.

A couple of months before we left on our trip, the Mamma-woman contacted the office of our Senator and requested information on arranging tours for the White House, Library of Congress, and the Capitol. Not only did they have a ton of information (which they were happy to send us), but the office manager personally made reservations for us and took care of everything! All of this was done very professionally, friendly, and free! To be honest, I didn’t think about it, but as American citizens, these are OUR buildings and all of these people work for us. The politicians themselves may have forgotten that, but with only one exception (the tour guide for the Capitol which I will talk about in the next blog entry), every politician’s assistant, office worker, the tour guides, the police and the employees at every building were extremely nice, friendly, respectful, and helpful. I have to say, I honestly didn’t expect it so it was a very nice surprise.

Library of Congress - beautiful building!

The very first thing you will notice while walking around downtown is the amount of security. There are police EVERYWHERE! There are armed guards EVERYWHERE! There are large metal vehicle barriers EVERYWHERE! There are policemen on every block. There are idling police cruisers parked with a policeman inside or standing beside them every two blocks. Every government building has at least 1 armed guard outside every door and additional armed guards as well as metal detectors at every entrance. Some of the buildings, like the Capitol, have 4 or 5 guards armed with M-16′s standing outside every entrance with more inside. If you don’t feel safe in downtown Washington, D.C., you will never feel safe anywhere.

Christmas in the Library
of Congress

Our tour guide, Janice, was a retired college history professor and it was very evident she loves her job as a guide and she has a passion for the Library of Congress and the story behind it. She was unhurried, patient, knowledgeable and so enthusiastic and informative that she will now be my standard for rating tour guides. From her, we discovered that every little detail, every carving, every painting, every sculpture in the whole building has a meaning and it all comes together to tell a story. It would take a large book to tell the story our excellent guide told us in 2 hours so I won’t even try to do that. I simply cannot do it justice. Please go here http://www.loc.gov/about/more/swf/index.html to learn more about this fabulous entity.

After our tour, we spent some time in the gift shop and then we walked around inside the building some more. We marveled at a Gutenberg Bible and a Mainz Bible, both printed before 1500; we looked at Thomas Jefferson’s original library; we saw the very first map with “America” printed on it and we saw the Great Hall where scholars do their research using over 100 million items kept by the Library of Congress. And I admit, as impressive as all of that is and as thrilled as I was to see it, it was kind of a little additional thrill also to see where scenes of the movie “National Treasure” were filmed.

Looking up to the 2nd floor.

Soon we had to leave as we had an appointment at Senator Mark Pryor’s office. I’ll talk about that in my next blog entry. To say myself and my family were impressed with the Library of Congress would be an understatement. What an excellent way to start our stay in Washington, D.C.!