Going to schools, even in the summer! Day 4, July 2020

July 31, 2020

Warning:  Lots of photos today!

They have cute row houses all around the foggy bottom neighborhood.

We slept in this morning, then walked to Trader Joe's to get some breakfast food (muffins, fruit, babka).  It was sprinkling (and we didn't have umbrellas) so we finally found a covered entrance to a business in Georgetown that was closed and stopped there to eat.  Georgetown is a very cute neighborhood in DC with cobblestone streets and brick sidewalks.  It is upscale with many local businesses.  We visited Georgetown University today and did a self-guided tour that we downloaded.  It is very large and backs onto the Foundry Branch Valley Park.  It is partially surrounded by the stone fence of the original 1789 University, but now extends about three blocks past the fence and the rest of the grounds are full of buildings.  There are some nicer modern buildings and some unfortunate modern buildings (like the library), but many of the buildings are very old (and beautiful).  Due to the pandemic, they were all locked, so we were unable to enter any of them and had to go off the tour that had us going through a building.  We all really liked it, Anneliese likened it to Hogwarts.  With the drizzly weather, I said why bother going to Scotland, it would be like this--old buildings with drizzle.  Here are some of our photos:

Joshua in front of Healy Hall

Porch of Healy Hall (where we waited out some of the rain)

Copley Hall--one of the residence halls

Georgetown mascot--bulldog

Georgetown Hoyas

Dining Hall

chapel on campus

stained glass window in chapel

graveyard on campus--we joked that they were the freshmen that got overwhelmed!

We saw another graveyard on a hill and joked that this is where the upperclassmen were buried

residence hall

campus

Commons area with original stone wall in the background

gates

Next we took an Uber to The American University.  It is in the city of Washington, but the area around it seems very suburban, with big houses, big yards, and large grounds and parking lots surrounding buildings.  The University says that its grounds are their arboretum, and the grounds are planted with a LOT of flowers--I recognized most of them as primarily native prairie plants (but not necessarily native to Washington DC?).  We downloaded the self-guided tour which didn't really tell us much about the campus.  It just pointed out the quad and a few of the buildings.  The campus is much more open with fewer buildings.  All are new, even though the university was established in 1893, but many are built in the classical style.  One that is not, is the building that Joshua would be taking many of his classes in, the School of International Service.  Again, all of the buildings were locked.

The School of International Service

Inside the School of International Service (through the door!)

School of Journalism

A little tiny house with a dish out front--for a cat?

Across the quad

A labyrinth

The tour of Georgetown was more complete and informative (it even included comments from students).  The campuses had definitely different feels--both positive, just different.  But Georgetown has more prestige.  Also, the neighborhood around Georgetown had places to go, but there was nothing around American to go to (very outer ring suburban feel even though it was in the city).

We then took another Uber back to the hotel to cool down and dry off.  Some of us napped, then we went out to dinner to The Founding Farmers.  Good food.  I asked if they had flavored lemonades, and the wait staff said no.  I said that I was torn between the Hibiscus soda and the lemonade and she said that they could put Hibiscus syrup into the lemonade.  It was so good!