Washington DC; Saturday, 25 August, 2018

I had a quick breakfast in the hotel and then headed out and up to the metro station a couple of blocks away to catch the subway out to Union station. I’d had an early breakfast so by the time I made it to Union I had enough time to purchase a two-day open-top bus tour ticket and grab some water for the journey before the first bus of the morning set off.

The first tours of the morning took a very different route to that published on the map due to a 10K race that was taking place in the city that morning, so the live guide was having to jump around their tour script quite a bit as stops went past in a random order.

I did one full circuit on the red line and then stayed on round to the main interchange point with the other lines close to the Lincoln Memorial.

I hopped onto the next available Yellow line route that headed up through the city and out into the North Western districts towards the zoo. This tour at least stuck to the map of the route it was doing, which was thankful as I doubt the pre-recorded commentary would have been able to cope with a change of route.

Back at the Lincoln Memorial I hopped onto a Blue route bus that was immediately behind and did a loop of the blue line out to the pentagon and Arlington National Cemetery. Back at Lincoln I changed back onto a red line, which by now was back onto its correct route and headed back to Union station where I stopped for a very late lunch.

I did one full correct circuit of the red route, this time actually being able to take in sights like the Capitol Hill before it headed back to Union station at the end of its normal running day.

My ticket included a night tour of the city, and during the day the guides had been advising people to get to Union station early as the queues usually started about an hour before the tour. As I got off the red tour bus there was already quite a queue forming, which in the end turned out to be one whole bus plus a couple extra, but that did mean that by the time they started boarding I had an almost complete choice of seats on the top deck for the night tour.

The night tour set off just after 19:30 with the sun starting to set over the city. The guide took us out past the Capitol Hill and down through the centre of the city, over the river and out to Arlington for an evening tour round the city and the Iwo Jima statue. As we arrived at the statue the Netherlands Carillion was being played – which the tour guide remarked on as being strange as it was never normally played, a few minutes later various peoples phones burst into life with news headlines on the passing of the former presidential candidate John McCain, which then put the playing into context.

From the Iwo Jima statue we crossed back over the Potomac in the dark and went for a tour around the key monuments in the city centre before finally parking up near the Lincoln Memorial where we all got off the bus for a 20-minute walking tour that took in the Korea war memorial and the Lincoln Memorial.

Back on the bus we were driven back to Union station where I hopped onto the metro and caught it back to the hotel for a well-earned night’s sleep.