It was strange to actually arrive in New York/New Jersey the night prior to departing the ship, but we were still awake as we pulled in under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. We could just see the skyline of Manhattan and fell asleep as the ship pirouetted in the bay and was snugged against the dock.

Pulling in at midnight

View of Manhattan in the morning

Daylight brought a hazy view of Manhattan again as we had one last breakfast on the ship in preparation for another long day of travel that would take us just a couple hundred miles south to Washington DC. After going through a very perfunctory Customs and Immigration stop, we headed to our shuttle bus for JFK. We took an interesting route up through New Jersey to Fort Lee, NJ, and across the George Washington Bridge into Manhattan. It brought back memories of our only previous visit to New Jersey. We were visiting our good friend Melanie back in the early 80’s when she lived in Manhattan and we decided to walk across the bridge just so we could say we’d been to NJ. And now we have two visits to NJ.

Note the sign on the bus mirror – Get in, Sit Down, and HANG ON

Our bus included passengers who were leaving JFK from four different terminals. As our bus driver pointed out, JFK was not well designed for making stops at multiple terminals as we could not just drive from one terminal to the next. We had to exit the airport and re-enter for each separate terminal. Our terminal was the third on the list so we went around three times. Very strange.

We arrived in Washington DC on time and the short ride to the hotel provided some fun views of the Mall and other famous sights. We also spotted a bike path that we may well take.

Our room is filled with political art which is fun:

It is interesting to note how being in the capitol affects the tone of the town in many ways. Wandering around in the evening away from the tourist areas, a suit is practically a uniform around here. And not sharp looking suits, just dull everyday suits. We also began to notice how blacks SUV’s are extremely popular. Of course the secret service and other security forces favor them, but because of that it seems like they have become some kind of status symbol, so you just see tons of them on the street driven by everyday people. And it seems that every TV in bars and public areas is tuned to political news if it’s not on sports.

The hotel is centrally located and we headed out Monday morning for a first day of sight-seeing, after a stop at a bike shop, of course, so we could pick up the local cycling map. We also admired a Faraday bike, a particularly nice looking electric assist bike, something we may need to look into in the future if our knees get to the point we need help getting up hills.

Washington Monument

It’s so fun walking around DC because so many of the buildings are huge and impressive, sometimes taking up an entire block. Some are museums and some are government buildings. One of the most impressive turned out to be the Department of Commerce, and another was the Executive Office Building, which is right next to the White House. It was interesting to note a change since our last visits to DC – you can no longer even get up to the fence in front of the White House. There is a temporary second in front of it, and the area in between is patrolled. We asked, and this is an extra measure put in place after that guy jumped over the fence and rushed the White House. The Secret Service guard we talked too bristled a bit at our question about that incident and took pains to explain that when that happened the fence was being worked on which made it easier for the guy to scale it.

Executive Office Building

White House

Our first museum stop was the National Archives which turned out to be quite interesting. We not only saw the original Constitution, Declaration of Independence, and Bill of Rights, but the Magna Carta was also on display as well. There was a great exhibit on the development of rights in America. One particular section was on women’s rights. It was interesting to see that until around 1920 even a woman’s citizenship was tied to her husband’s. So for instance, if a woman born in the US married a French citizen who had moved here, she would be considered a French citizen rather than US. If her husband then died, she would have to petition the government to have her US citizenship reinstated. While Tami remembered this, Mike did not realize that up until 1974 (when we were in high school), a woman could not get a credit card on her own – she could only get a card as an extension of her husband’s credit account.

National Archives

Mike liked these pictures on the wall leading to the Boeing Learning Center inside the National Archives:

We next moved on to the Smithsonian American History museum. We could have spent much more time, but covered as much as we could before closing time. We saw the flag that flew over Fort McHenry and inspired the Star Spangled Banner. It’s huge! We also saw Lincoln’s top hat that he was wearing at Ford’s Theater. An exhibit on the Presidents was also fascinating. Tami loved the numismatics exhibit and also the display of laboratory glassware. Mike enjoyed the Presidential displays, transportation room, and the old gunboat built by Benedict Arnold.

Lincoln’s hat the night he was assasinated

Of course we also had several great meals. We stopped at a pub for lunch, where we had New Orleans style BBQ shrimp and a Reuben. For dinner we found a wonderful Cuban restaurant. The interior was decorated like a Havana street scene. We had a trio of ceviches, a shredded beef dish with black beans and rice, and a pulled pork dish cooked in orange with black bean sauce.