Today we felt like doing something a little different so we decided to travel outside of the district. We went down to the metro and grabbed a train to Alexandria. We really had not planned this out carefully, and we were thinking that we could combine this with a visit to Mount Vernon. We had read that there were boat cruises on the Potomac and some firm that allowed you to bike down to Mount Vernon and catch the boat back.
It was a long subway ride and from the King Street Station we took one of those tacky motorized cable cars into the center of the Old Town area. Neither of us was taken with Alexandria at first. To me it looked like Georgetown … but with tee shirt and fudge shops. Things did not get better when we discovered that the river cruises do not start until next month and the firm that offered the combination bike and boat adventure had gone out of business. We could get a bike and ride down to Mount Vernon, but John was not up for 20 miles of bike riding, particularly with rain predicted for late afternoon. So we did what we always do in stressful situations like this. We had lunch.
While having our meal at a reasonably good faux roadhouse. And while we were there, overhearing the legal gossip from the nearby tables, everyone one of which seemed to be populated with lawyers, John discovered that the City of Alexandria had a podcast tour of historic sites. We downloaded it and we were off to make the best of a lovely day. We discovered some almost hidden parks
and cobblestone streets.
There were lots of interesting sites, but Christ Church was highlight.
We shared out visit with a large school group.
And the reason we were all there was to sit in George Washington’s pew.
We caught Uber back to the district because we knew if we took Metro we would never have time for a final museum visit and I wanted to go to the Smithsonian Museum of American History.
In retrospect, maybe we should have skipped the museum. There were a few interesting exhibits, but the place was packed with obnoxious school groups, mostly comprised of middle school children. They all seemed to be wearing tee shirt specially designed for the class trip executed in shades on green and orange normally reserved for highway workers or convicts. By the time the wretched adolescents had cleared out and we started to be able to actually see the objects on display, the museum was closing.
It was also raining by this time and so we just went back to the hotel.
