Home is where my bed is

For a while I have been wanting to write about Washington, DC, and posts some pictures of the city. I love living here and generally feel that the city gets too much bad press! It is beautiful, it is very walkable, there is so much to do and see, and it offers many interesting jobs. So there! I want to do a series on the city, highlighting some of the things I like. I will definitely be doing some entries on rowhouses, like I did with Baltimore. One of the nicest things with living in DC is to be able to stroll and run on the National Mall, where some of the country's most famous and visited attractions are located.

Today I will write about the National Cherry Blossom Festival, which took place the first two weeks of April. The Festival is organized each year and celebrates the gift of 3,000 Cherry Blossom trees that was given to DC by the mayor of Tokyo in 1912 as a gesture of friendship between the two cities. Another 3.500 were received in 1965. The trees line the Tidal Basin, Hains Point, and Potomac Park and provide a spectacular sight when they bloom, usually in early April. (It is impossible to predict exactly when the trees will bloom, but usually they bloom sometime during the festival.)

First of all, sorry for the delay between the last post and this one! It's not very nice to launch a new series and then take off... I went away for almost a week and only scheduled one post (which I scheduled for the day I left, not too swift). Now I am back and ready to write!

Second of all, it is ironic that I, as a foreigner, am writing "facts about DC", but bear with me. I have come to realize that many people don't know that much about DC, and that goes for people of all nationalities.
So here we go!

Fun Fact #1: DC is not a state. Many people don't realize that DC is not one of the 50 states. Which is not that weird, since it is listed with a "state acronym" just like all the states. I guess we can call it a special district, or something like that. The 2005 census stated the DC population at 582,000 people. If it were a state, it would be the smallest in area but it would have more people than Wyoming.

In this article from the Washington Post, you can read about two recent college graduates who are offering free, tip-based tours of the National Mall area. However, the professional tour guides are not too happy.

I spent a lot of time walking around town today, with two goals in mind: First of all, to work on my tan, and secondly, to take pictures for my upcoming posts about DC houses and neighborhoods. However, I also ended up popping into Union Station to look for some shoes. Union Station is a very beautiful train station and fits perfectly into what I think a train station should look like: grandiose, made out of marble, and with tall ceilings. The station was opened in 1907 and serves as the train hub for AmTrak, MARC and VRE commuter trains, and the DC Metro.

One day while walking downtown I noticed that a big building (actually I think there were two) were being torn down, on the corner of K Street and Connecticut Avenue, NW. This is a very busy street and some prime real estate, I bet. I took pictures and I have noticed many others do the same. It just looks so sad and gaping with this big building crumbling down.

I think a lot of visitors don't visit the residential areas of the city. The museums and the monuments are mostly at the National Mall and downtown. Of the more residential areas that get visited are Dupont Circle and Georgetown, but mainly for the restaurants and the shopping, not to wander the streets and look at houses.

Pretty details and pretty flowers:

Personally, I think the townhouses in DC are one of the best things about the city, and it saddens me that there could be even more of them left, but many were mowed down in the 1950s to make room for larger buildings. Then again, I guess there had to be more space for offices - a three story townhouse couldn't really hold that many offices! In any case, Washington, DC was spared a lot of the demolition that destroyed many American cities, leaving them with large office buildings and no night life. DC offers many great neighborhoods and lots of pretty houses.

Entrance:

One of the prettiest blocks in the city is the 1400 block of Q Street NW (DC is on a grid so it is easy to find - it is the block of Q Street that runs between 14th and 15th Street NW.) The houses are quite varied and some are set a lot further back than most townhouses, with beautiful gardens in the front. I am a city girl but one of the best things with DC is the many beautiful gardens brightening up the streets. If you ever visit, make sure to check it out! Take the metro to Dupont Circle, exit to Q Street and walk the five blocks to see this charming street.

Washington, DC has distinctive neighborhoods, many with beautiful row houses lining the streets. As I mentioned earlier, DC is on a grid, making the city easy to navigate. The city was designed by French-born architect Pierre Charles L’Enfant, who drew up a basic plan in 1791. I want to post some photos from the different neighborhoods, but I wanted to put it a little history of the city’s layout first. (And one fun fact: As many of you know, Washington has many avenues named after states. Only California and Ohio do not have avenues; instead there is California Street and Ohio Drive. Washington state did not have its own avenue either, to avoid confusion, but eventually got one – however, it does not have any addresses on it.)

Now that I have covered the layout (a diamond grid with four main sections – northwest, northeast, southeast, and southwest) I can go on to talk about an actual neighborhood! A popular and beautiful neighborhood is Capitol Hill. Most of you will probably think of the area around the US Capitol as “Capitol Hill”, but in DC, it is more commonly used to describe the neighborhood east of the Capitol.

Pierre L’Enfant, the architect of the city, originally named the area Jenkins Hill or Jenkins Heights, and it is one of the oldest residential areas of the city. It became a distinct neighborhood in the early 1800s when the government was building the Capitol and the Navy Yard, and a little later the Marine Barracks, providing employment for a large number of people. A real estate boom took place between 1890 and 1910 as electricity, running water, and plumbing were installed in the area’s houses. Capitol Hill has been a Historic District since 1976, and is one of the largest ones in the US. Most of the buildings are late Victorian. As you walk towards the Capitol, the houses become grander and larger, while smaller, more modest townhouses line the streets further east. Join me for a walk from Potomac Avenue SE to Union Station!

I love the interesting roofs - I want to do a whole post on those one day!