Last day in Washington DC and we needed to avoid last-day syndrome, particularly as we had the whole day to kill as the flight wasn’t until 22:45. We had done all the major sites and places that we wanted to visit but there were a couple more outposts to go to.
Eastern market
We had intended to check out the Eastern Market on Monday when we were over that way visiting Capitol Hill, but unfortunately it was shut then. We got the Metro over and walked the short distance to the market. The attractive building houses a traditional market selling fresh fruit, vegetables, meat, and fish, all of which looked good quality. Somewhere picky locals could go if they wanted to avoid the major supermarkets, although to be fair, there hasn’t been a Walmart in sight over the last week.
Attractive as it was there is only so long that you can spend in a fresh foods market, about five minutes in my experience, so we headed out to check out the local area. There were some very attractive looking houses lining the streets around the market and the residents were clearly public spirited if the number of Little Free Libraries in gardens was a reliable measure.
We ended up in a public park with a couple of interesting pieces of public art and a worker chasing falling leaves with a leaf blower. He was not making much noticable progress and it’s only the start of autumn!
America is a very clean place by and large. Sidewalks are swept, public flowerbeds tended and watered, no litter bins overflowing and leaves blown around. I’m not sure who pays for this but there is clearly some focus on it and some pride in their surroundings.
Navy Yard
For lunch we headed to the Navy Yard area of the city. This was an area that had been regenerated but seemed pretty soulless and was more somewhere for people to live than to visit it seemed to me. Nevertheless, we had a nice walk along the waterfront and around the outside of the Washington Nationals stadium before returning to the hotel.
I think that we have wrung everything out of Washington. Getting around using the Metro has been incredibly easy and allowed us to go all over the city. There is some disappointment that we managed to travel on all the Metro lines except Yellow, so maybe we’ll need to come back to complete the set!
This was also the first holiday where we used no cash whatsoever, we were able to do everything on card and almost all transactions were done by phone. A convenience for everyone, with the exception of the occasional panhandlers we saw.
