At the Capitol

Val and I were in Washington, D.C. for a week. He attended a training course in the city and I was on vacation mode, fresh from boot camp. One of the landmarks we visited was the U.S. Capitol.

---

On our first night in the city, Val and I walked around to find the best route to his training venue. As we made the turn on Pennsylvania Avenue NW, I first saw the Capitol the way I see it on the telly. From this point, I thought that the walk towards the Capitol wasn't that far because of the size of the building. However, it's still about 30 minutes by foot!

A few days later, I was waiting for Val to finish class and I walked far enough to reach the reflecting pool of the Capitol. I thought that I might as well visit the Capitol since it's already right in front of me. When I got there, a guard said that the Visitor Centre was already closed for the day but I could go inside the next day... no appointment and no documents necessary.

The next day, Val took his lunch break near the Capitol. It's great that his class had breaks that were long enough to permit a walk to different landmarks along the National Mall. The way he described the class was that it's challenging and fast-paced. So a few minutes out in the sun on a beautiful spring day should make up for long hours inside their training room.

What he didn't know, while he was taking pictures on the lawn in front of the Capitol, was that I was actually inside the Capitol on a group tour!

I managed to get inside the Capitol through the Library of Congress. I first entered the Emancipation Hall where the plaster cast of the Statue of Freedom.

The bronze version of this statue sits on top of the Capitol dome. The fasces appear at the base of the statue, along with the motto "E pluribus unum".

Anyway, aside from the plaster cast, there were other statues inside the Emancipation Hall. One of the people I know of is Jack Swigert. He was an astronaut in the Apollo 13 program.

The tour brought us to the Crypt of the Capitol. It's supposed to be the resting place of George Washington. However, he opted to be buried in Mount Vernon so the crypt is empty. This is the first stop of the tour and we were able to see statues representing different states.

We also saw a compass on the floor. This indicates the different directional divisions of Washington, D.C. streets. For example, the NW in Pennsylvania Avenue NW.

The next room my tour group entered was the Rotunda. It's a sight to behold and I wasn't sure where to look first. Our guide pointed up all the way to the top, where a vague painting is located. It's called the "Apotheosis of Washington" and it was created by Constantino Brumidi. Good thing my camera had good zoom capacity; I was able to get a clearer image of the painting... in which George Washington was surrounded by what seem to be angels.

Closer to eye level, was a fresco frieze, also by Brumidi, that depicted various scenes in the history of the U.S., from the arrival of Europeans to the development of airplanes. Below the frieze were paintings. Four of which were all about arrival of the Europeans and the conversion of the natives to Christianity while the rest were about the establishment of the United States (independence from the British Empire and the signing of the Constitution, for example).

From the Rotunda, we passed by the office of current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. I would have loved to meet her in person but she was probably in a House session (which wasn't part of the tour route). We then entered the National Statuary Hall where statues of exemplary residents of different states could be found. The guide identified some of the statues, like Rosa Parks (the "first lady" of the American civil rights movement, who refused to transfer to the "coloured" side of the bus when ordered by the bus driver) and Saint Junipero Serra, a Spanish Franciscan priest who founded Catholic missions in California (thereby establishing a foothold for the Spanish Empire in the west coast) while the Americans were fighting for independence in the east coast.

The only statue whose name I recognised easily was Norman Borlaug's because he's the father of the Green Revolution. He is one of the silent heroes who saved millions of people from poverty and hunger through cutting-edge agricultural science.

By the time I got out of my group tour, Val's class was already wrapping up. It was time for me to walk the length of Pennsylvania Avenue NW once again.