If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you might’ve seen me mentioning my friend AF every now and then. We’ve known each other since childhood, and she’s visited me at every one of our overseas posts since we joined the Foreign Service. Back at the beginning of 2020, she joined the FS herself as an OMS. And her first post was Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
Being a hardship post, the folks in Haiti get a few R&Rs during their two-year tour, and AF kindly chose to spend a week with us on her last R&R. It’s always awesome to see her, but this was the first time that we had so much crazy work stuff in common to talk about as well! But we also wanted to get out and do some fun things in the DC area.
So I took a few days off, and we scouted out some sites. My son was in camp from 9am-4pm, so we had a decent window to explore each day and have lunch before heading back home. The main things that we visited were the National Cathedral, the Museum of the American Indian, the Museum of the Bible, and the Winery at Bull Run.
Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in the City and Diocese of Washington
(aka) The National Cathedral has been on my list for quite a while. It’s almost hard to believe that we hadn’t visited it yet. It’s a stunning Neo-Gothic building with an incredibly long official name constructed in 1907. It’s the second largest cathedral in the US and has its own little underground parking garage for around $6.
The day that we went, we decided to tour the outside first, which was impressive in itself, and the detailed limestone carvings were amazing. Plus there were places I wouldn’t even have thought to look for, like the Women’s Porch added in 1941, the Cathedral Cloister Courtyard dedicated in 1969, and the Bishop’s Garden that was modeled after medieval walled gardens in Europe. And, of course, there is the famous Darth Vader gargoyle, but it was too high up to see clearly.
Sadly once we’d finally circled around and reached the front door, there was a small sign on it saying that it was randomly closed for the day. I’d even checked the website that morning to confirm the hours, so that was a bummer, and the interior still remains on my list.
More to come…
In-Flight Movie - DC Edition 