And so, we visited Washington DC, the nation’s capital, for the first time. We had planned this about a year ago, before the Current Political Atmosphere (aka the Current Reality of American Politics, if we want acronyms), but we wanted to see some History. We took the DC Metro from the airport down to the Federal Triangle to find our hotel, which was right in the middle of History. The Waldorf Astoria was pretty nice – amazing what you can get with points – with top hatted men opening doors and asking us about our ‘driver’ (mate we came by tube), but was built into the old Post Office Building, on the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and 12th. This place has real American History. It is also the second highest building in DC, after the Washington Monument – this is not a city of skyscrapers, more a city of lofty ideas. It was also the start of Cherry Blossom season – while most of them had not yet started really blossoming, the pink buds were starting to come out. Right outside the hotel was a statue of Benjamin Franklin, one of the most well-known of the Founding Fathers. I sketched him below, after drawing the hotel (above) on our first morning. We did actually go up the clock tower (properly called the Old Post Office Tower), which is a national historic monument (with a separate entrance outside the hotel) and admire the views across DC, though I did not sketch from up there.

I won’t post all my DC sketches in one go because it’s a lot of reading and writing, so I’ll just post these few and then we can take a sketched tour of DC after that, before sketching our way through New York City. Below is the view from our bedroom window. Our bedroom was pretty impressive, including a big chandelier and a very deep bathtub. The building across from us was the William Jefferson Clinton Federal Building. This whole area is full of federal government buildings, all those ones you hear about constantly on the news. It reminded us very much of being in Whitehall. The IRS was next door to us. The FBI were around the corner.

I had to sketch at least one DC fire hydrant, for the collection, so I drew the one below opposite the hotel. I had been hoping that maybe the hydrants here had Abraham Lincoln style hats. We were very close to the Ford’s Theatre, where Lincoln was famously shot dead by John Wilkes Booth. I mean, if you are going to wear a big hat like that in the theatre. These days someone would film the argument and put it on Instagram for clicks and likes. This ended up being the only hydrant I drew in DC, but I did draw a lot of other stuff so join me next time to see some more.