Oct 5 Wednesday- DC and Alexandria

Last hurrah of Hurricane Ian, destroyer of homes/lives and inconveniencer of vacations.

We took the subway up to Arlington Memorial cemetary and then walked across the Potomac on the newly refurbished memorial bridge,

which leads to the back of the Lincoln memorial. On the DC side of the bridge, there are several very large sculptures given to the US by Italy.

Then we hoofed it over to the White House for our tour. Getting into the White House tour requires you write your local representative, either House or Senate, and request permission. It must be done between 90 and 15 days prior to the planned visit. We submitted our request and didn’t hear back until about 2 weeks from the tour, but we got in. The tour itself was excellent, and it was fantastic to stand in these places that I’ve seen in pictures over the years.

We did NOT get to go to the Oval Office. President Biden did not come out and ask me for any advice either. Disappointing.

At this point we were pretty tired of walking, so we rented some scooters and head up Embassy row until we got to the Italian embassy.

I thought about going in, but in typical Italian government fashion, it was open to Italian citizens for only 2 hours a day…. And we weren’t there during those hours. Plus, I didn’t have my passport, so we just took some pictures and left.

Took the metro back to the hotel and then drove to the Old Town Alexandria Waterfront

where we had a fantastic dinner at Ada’s on the River

and then went to a movie. Rainclouds were finally starting to clear.