A Trip to Our Nation's Capital

Background

This extraordinary experience all begins with one of my good buddies named Brian who I met while here at UGA. This man knows more about how our federal government operates than anyone I know. As long as I've known him he wanted to work on The Hill. Having interned in D.C. already when he graduated in May of 2016, he decided to move to the Capitol in search of a job. He had success pretty early on and landed a job as a staff assistant for Senator Flake from Arizona. We've kept in touch off and on since he left, he kept telling me I needed to visit since I had never been to Washington D.C. before. With it being a about a 10 hour drive and him busy with work most of the time we had to plan the trip on the perfect weekend. After a solid amount of planning, my roommate Chris and I chose a good date for a time to visit, got the approval from Brian and were set to go.

Mission D.C.

We benefitted from planning this trip far out because congress was on recess Brian had more free time and was able to secure us a tour of the Capitol. We met up with Brian at the Senator offices and something I found out was that many government buildings are connected by underground tunnels, so to get from the Senator offices to the Capitol you have to take a train (which I have included a picture of). Although pictures accurately capture what the train looks like, the beauty of the Capitol cannot truly be encapsulated by photos. The rotunda of the structure is massive and once I was inside looking up at it I was in awe. The room also includes historical paintings that were taken of founding fathers hundreds of years ago. Historians believe that these paintings give us the most accurate depiction of what our founding fathers actually looked like. Last cool little tidbit from this tour was that Brian was able to take us down the stairs that elected president's walk down before walking through the doors to be inaugurated. 

A Night Out On The Town

I was surprised to learn that a good portion of the population of D.C. is recent college graduates and people in their twenties. In fact Senators and Congressmen/women staff's are almost entirely made up of men and women in their twenties. Another thing I noticed while there was that
everyone I knew was very friendly and wanted to get to know me before then trying to convince me to live there. It appeared to me that everyone was constantly trying to make connections. I fully enjoyed exploring the different districts of Washington. There is some sort of law or ordinance that prevents property owners from building more than 4 stories so you can see the Washington Monument from many different parts of the city. The bars Brian took us to were very neat. Most bars were multiple stories with a different theme on each floor. My favorite bar we went to is called Madams Organ which is in the Adams Morgan district of the city. The bar had a band playing blues music on the first floor with tables to eat in the back, a DJ playing top 100 hits on the second floor, and a rooftop bar on the top floor. The whole establishment had unique decorations including many different taxidermied animals. The band was fantastic, playing songs you could jam to for hours. My favorite part of the bar was the small balcony they had on the second floor that overlooked the Adams Morgan district. We ended our night with a jumbo slice of pizza which is apparently a late night essential. I'm glad I got to catch up with Brian and I'm also very pleased that I can cross another American city off my travel list.