I have returned from a holiday in Washington DC, the nation’s capital. I will probably write several posts on the subject, but I will say that I thoroughly enjoyed the while experience. This post just highlights a few differences between DC and London; which is after all close to the stated purpose of this blog.
One of the most obvious differences between Washington and London is that the city is not populated with closed circuit cameras every few hundred yards. There are units above the doors of government buildings and museums, but not monitoring every inch of pavement. You can still get a lot closer to The White House than you can to 10 Downing Street.
It is perfectly usual to see signs on the doors of museums in the UK banning smoking and food and drinks; but I have not seen one explicitly banning weapons. The bag check and metal detector at each entrance did lead to what might loosely be called queues to get into the museums, as noted here Americans seem to have a less rigorous approach to the noble art of forming a queue.
The taxi-cabs in DC have no meters, but charge base on a zone method. This means that there is no advantage in them taking a circuitous route, as the increased mileage brings no additional fare. There is an additional charge for a ride during rush hour, but apart from the loss in time there is no expense for the passenger if you are caught in a jam. Very unusually a taxi can pick up additional passengers as long as their destination is no more than five blocks off your route. The taxi-driver gets to charge each party the full fare. The cost of DC taxis is extremely reasonable and while nothing compares to London cabdrivers’ “Knowledge”, all the ones we used seemed to know where they going.
