Capitol at Night

Another full day in this amazing city, starting with an early start to visit Mount Vernon,  Naively, we thought that a prompt arrival would beat the crowds - well, you should have seen the line up of coaches that had beaten us!! I'm not really sure what we made of that place or how we gained from the experience.  MV was certainly slick in dealing with the volume of visitors, the many school groups were not badly behaved but intrusive and it was interesting to see how George Washington had improved farming and the lives of those enslaved to him.  We are pleased that we visited although not sorry to leave.

Back in Washington DC we visited the Space and flight museum.  A large part of it was closed for redevelopment and a corporate event which squished all the visitors into less space.  The exhibits were good although we felt underwhelmed by the visit.  I did have great fun playing with double exposures on a reflective surface of a space station (extra} Next door, the museum of American Indians was superb in its architecture and I spent a lot of time looking at that rather than its contents,

We moved on to look at the Capitol exterior.  Rain was threatened, although never arrived, and the light was flat.  We decided to wait for the lights to come on and so spent a very pleasant 'Happy Hour' in a bar at Union Station chatting to a government economist from Korea whose father is a landscape photographer.  Returning to the Capitol, it was hard to find a suitable vantage point to point the camera and the ambient city lights gave a strange glow. 

We are now checked in for our homeward flight tomorrow evening and will make the most of our day tomorrow in this incredible city.