In another week, we'll be off to
Washington DC for a week, followed by a week in coastal Virginia. In DC you can arrange to tour many of the significant sites on your own, but the best way to make sure you can get tours of major attractions in the nation's capital is by contacting your senator or representative, whose staff arranges tours for constituents. We did this the last time we visited DC, three years ago, and we're doing it again (with a new senator, Mark Udall) this time.
All of our national representatives have websites, and you can find yours by Googling "office of Senator so-and-so." On the front page of the site will be a link that says something like "Visiting DC." This will take you to a page with some instructions and a form to fill out indicating the dates of your visit and what available tours you're interested in. Fill out the form, send it off, and wait to hear from the staff member (in our case, Lauren in Sentaor Udall's office) in charge of arranging tours. The process can take a while, since the senator or representative's staff acts as a liaison between you and the agency that handles tours for the sites you'd like to visit.
You should submit requests five to six weeks in advance of your visit, and there are no guarantees about getting the tours you request, especially if you travel at busy times. You should also be open to possibilities other than your first or second choices. Last time we went, we weren't able to get a couple of the tours we asked for, so the senator's staff asked if we would like a Library of Congress tour. It turned out to be one of the highlights of our trip, and I recommend it highly to anyone interested in books, history, or architecture.
The White House, which was still in post-9/11 mode and not doing tours on our visit to DC three years ago, has now re-opened to tours for the public. However, groups must consist of ten people or more, so each state's Congressional delegation works together to form groups for the tours. Because of that, you may not know until fairly close to the beginning of your trip whether you will get a White House tour or not.
This time we requested tours of the
Capitol (which we had done last time but wanted to do again), the
White House, the
Pentagon, and the
Supreme Court. Other choices available were the
Library of Congress and the
Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Lauren was able to arrange for us to tour all of our requested sites except the Supreme Court, which she explained wasn't available because the limited number of tickets available were already taken for the time we would be in DC (but she told us about the Courtroom lectures that are held when the Court is not in session, which we could attend). We're also invited to stop by the senator's office to pick up passes for the Senate gallery so we can observe proceedings.
We have written instructions for each tour about where to go, when to be there, and what we can take in with us (which is pretty restrictive in most cases and different depending on what facility you're touring). Bringing those instructions along is important so you can keep straight what you can bring where. Names submitted to the senator's office must match the names on your IDs, and the Pentagon requires two forms of ID for adults. While heightened security is a fact of life these days, it is a shame that some places are still not open for public tours. For example, I took a fascinating tour of
FBI Headquarters in 1985, complete with a weapons firing demonstration, but the FBI currently continues to be closed for tours.
It is possible to arrange tours on your own, by going to individual websites; however, we've found it's just so much easier to go through your senator or representative's office, and you'll sometimes end up in a special tour group, rather than the one that's open to the general public.
On our own, we've arranged for a tour of the
State Department. (Click on the "About State" link and scroll to the bottom of the page to find the "Tour the State Department" link.) We're also hoping to visit the
Bureau of Printing and Engraving, but we'll have to line up for tours and take our chances.
When we're not touring, we've filled in our schedule with monuments and museums, and of course we're looking forward to sampling the good food to be found all through the District.
Follow the trip here on my
blog and on Twitter @worldisabook.
Annette
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