After spending two weeks in North America, half of it in the US, it was now time to visit the capital of the country – Washington D.C. The roughly two-hour long flight left from the (considering the physical size) largest airport in the World, Chicago O’Hare, and went to the national “Reagan” airport of Washington.

The next morning, or to be more precise around noon, we left our hotel in the Fogg Bottom district of Washington and after a breakfast as “wholefoods” around the corner I set off for an eventful day.

In the night before we had a thunderstorm which had been considered “severe” by the NWS – and it had left some traces. The storm damage near the Washington monument was recorded by SPC and it was confirmed as a straight-line wind event.

My first stop for the day was the Lincoln memorial – on the way there we also passed by the “Institute of Peace”.

Next stop was the Vietnam memorial. It is very depressing to see how many people died because of a pointless war between two ideologies.

After that, I went on to the Washington memorial but didn’t go inside because I didn’t feel like waiting in the open sun with temperatures of 37°C for an hour.

And finally, to sum up the day, we went to both the Natural History museum and the Smithsonian Air and Space museum. Both, but especially the latter, very nice and well-made museums – and both are free.