The US Capitol and a few flowers

November 16, 2007

Although I am not even a little bit surprised, security around the Capitol is extremely tight. You can barely go into any building without first passing at least one security guard. The day I decided that I would take a tour of the US Capitol I made sure to book plenty of time because I knew I would be spending a lot of time going through metal detectors and empting all the liquids out of my bag.

Tickets to tour the Capitol are free but they only hand out so many each day and you can only enter at the time on your ticket. Of course once I got mine it was about an hour wait so I had to find something else to do for a little while. Lucky for me, right across the street is the United States Botanical Garden. Like so many other things in the area it is free to visit. This is full of all kinds of flowers and was in the process of being decorated for Christmas and was definitely an interesting place to kill some time. It is home to about 5,000 different types of orchids.

A couple of the orchids you can see in the garden

This is a Silver Vase or Aechmea fasciata from Brazil

I think I spent more time going through security than actually touring the Capitol itself. They limit how much you can see and to head into the House or Senate you have to have special tickets which is a real pain since I am not a US citizen so I just took the small tour which included the Rotunda,

The ceiling of the Rotunda

and what they refer to as the “Whispering room”

When it was the House the design of the room made it almost impossible to hear what the person sitting beside you was saying but you could hear the guy whispering across the room. It made it hard to hide secrets from the opposing team. It actually was really need to see the demonstration.

We also took a tour through the old Supreme Court. This was the site of the final stages of the Amistad Africans trial. It is in the very dark basement...no windows and not very big at all.

This sculpture is also in the basement. If you notice Lincoln is missing an ear. The artist felt that because his presidency was incomplete this sculpture should be too.

Me with the Capitol

Looking down the Mall from the steps of the Capitol.

Julie