Travel Guide: Washington D.C. - United States

Sunset on the Washington Memorial
photo by: Emanuela Appetiti

Historical monuments, museums, and government buildings abound in Washington. Around the Mall, a park in the center of the city, you can find the US Capitol building, the museums of the Smithsonian, the National Archives, the White House, the Washington Monument, and the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials. Across the Potomac river in Virginia are the Pentagon and Arlington National Cemetery. Just to the northeast of Washington in Maryland, an easy car ride away, is another great city, Baltimore. The Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean are easily accessible. The city and the surrounding suburbs in Maryland and Virginia have an active and exciting night-life. There are clubs, bars, and theaters to satisfy any taste and restaurants of nearly every type in existence.

Although technically located in the South, Washington is a very cosmopolitan city and in fact bears little resemblance at all to the rest of the US. To most Americans DC is a fascinating place to visit, teeming with politics, diplomacy, history, and scandal.  Those of us who live "inside the Beltway" by choice wouldn't have it any other way.