Day TWENTY-ONE washington dc

Despite the weather lady saying the temps were going to calm down on Monday, it dawned pretty hot again with high humidity. The tour guys were turning up at 10.00 am with the air conditioned coach to give all 8 of us a private tour, the air con vehicle was a god send.

Gil, from Private Tours of Washington, our tour guide, had been in the job for 10 years, was a 7th generation native Washingtonian, had done his history major at Uni in DC and man was he a wealth of knowledge, what he didn,t know about the history of DC and it’s founding fathers wasn’t worth knowing, a simply brilliant tour.

We started off right across the road from the Hotel with the IwoJima monument, followed by a tour of the Arlington National cemetery, which included JFK’s gravesite and the eternal flame, changing of the guards at the tomb of the unknown soldier. Those guys are in full uniform jacketed up in 40 plus degrees, impressive.

It was so hot we got through a fair bit of water and were diving for shade under the trees at every opportunity we were not in the air conditioning van.

General Lee,s original residence before the Union confiscated it when he changed camp to command the Northern Virginia army with the Confederates.

Next on the agenda was the Lincoln memorial and the Washington monument, once again Gil was a fountain of knowledge. After lunch it was the US Marine Corp memorial and the Vietnam Veterans wall, White House and Capitol Hill. We were impressed with DC as a very clean and tidy city with lots of trees to keep it green. It is a very impressive city with so much to see, no way it can be done in one day, but the taste we had was great. Suffice to say it is a fly in and uba city rather than one to target on a motorcycle.!! A couple or three days would be needed to give DC a good going over to cover the various museums and Smithsonian. Worth the visit for sure.

The private tour was money well spent and made the hop on hop off bus tours in other cities look like amateur hour.