Washington DC; Sunday, 26 August, 2018

From the hotel it was a short walk a couple of blocks to Washington Circle where I was able to pick up one of the first Yellow line tours of the morning, on it’s way in to start its first full tour.

I did one full circuit of the Yellow line, and then changed onto the Blue at Lincoln Memorial just to finish off getting some photos, before hopping back onto the Red line to head back round towards the museums.

I had intended on spending the afternoon looking round a couple of the Smithsonian museums, but as the bus approached the National Mall the most noticeable feature was the vast number of different type of police cars (city, state, FBI, Security Services and transport) blocking the streets off. It later turned out that someone had left a bag abandoned near one of the museums which had sparked a massive security alert and the lockdown of most of the National Mall, and no access to any of the museums – so instead I stayed on the tour for an amended route through the city back to Union station and hopped off there to get a late lunch.

I picked up a later tour bus and, with access to the museums still restricted, headed down to the tidal basin to take in some of the different memorials that have been built round there, starting with the memorial to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I had a long wander through the impressive memorial before ending on the shore of the Tidal basin, looking across to the Martin Luther King Jnr memorial.

I walked round the edge of the basin and had a look round the MLK memorial before heading through the park land to the Korean Memorial and from there onto the impressive, and very busy, Lincoln Memorial.

By now the sun was starting to set again, so I headed down the side of the memorial and picked up one of the local DC Circulator buses that run on routes across the city at regular intervals. I caught it back to the interchange point near Union station and changed onto the line that headed back to close to the hotel.

I headed back to my room and freshened up before heading out to a nearby Chinese restaurant for dinner and, slightly uncomfortably stuffed, headed back to my hotel room.