We were sat in Starbucks this morning having breakfast and watching a little tableau unfold on the pavement (“sidewalk”) opposite where five police officers were arresting one guy. I’m not sure why five officers were necessary given that the man offered up no resistance. Maybe it was to help with the difficult job of rolling his trousers (“pants”) up, which took them an inordinate amount of time!
There has been a strong military presence here and initially I assumed that it was as we are only five minutes walk from the White House. However, many of those we see are in military fatigues with assault rifles – the National Guard. These are stationed here at the behest of Trump and, it seems, to the annoyance of the (Democrat) Mayor who feels it’s not necessary.
I have to say that I found that it had the opposite effect on me to that which it is supposed to. Rather than making me feel safer, it makes me uneasy, wondering why it is necessary. To be fair, we haven’t ever felt unsafe walking the streets, even at night. I guess Trump would say that’s job done, and Mayor Bowser would say it was safe before anyway, so 🤷.
National Mall
Having done the other end of the National Mall on our first full day here we deciecded to do the other end today. This is Capitol Hill. We’d been into the Capitol building, looking like a bleached St. Paul’s, the last time we were here so this time we headed for the botanical gardens, and of course, we were there before it opened.
We had a lovely walk around the conservatory of the botanical gardens but the outside bit was closed for renovations which was a shame. Next, we skirted around the edges of the Capitol building and went to a French café for a coffee. It was while sat here that we discovered that our next destination, the Eastern Market, doesn’t open on a Monday so we’ll have to do that on Wednesday.
Instead, we went to the Supreme Court building and did a self-guided tour. I have to admit that I knew very little about the US legislature and so this was a useful introduction. It talked about the amendments to the constitution, a number of which I was already aware of: 1st, 5th etc. but was shocked to learn that there are TWENTY SEVEN amendments! (Actually, there are 33 but only 27 have been ratified). It is also a beautiful building, well inside at any rate as the outside is covered in scaffolding.
We had decided that we would go on to the Natural History Museum but didn’t make it that far, going to the National Gallery of Art instead, which was really good. It was, however, somewhat confusing as there were two separate galleries – one for modern art and the other for contemporary art. They sounded very much like the same thing to me! This was cleared up with a quick search on our return:
Modern art refers to the period from the late 19th century to the 1970s, characterised by movements like Impressionism and Cubism, while contemporary art encompasses works created from the late 20th century to the present.
