by Thomas Knepper

Created on: November 30, 2008   Last Updated: January 08, 2009

Washington D.C. is a city with immense power, history, and poverty. It is a dichotomy in itself and as such has a little bit of everything to offer. It is a very small area and yet it has a baseball team, football team, the murder capital of the United States and the United States Government. No where else in America can you get so much.

Everyday walking down the street in the center of D.C. you can come across congresspeople or diplomats. The President of the free world resides there and you can feel the power that oozes from the White House. You are constantly in the city and can always have something to do. The metro is one of the nicest I have ever seen and it makes the ride to work very ejoyable. For lunch you can venture up to Capitol hill and eat with some of the most powerful people in the world, or take a short metro ride to one of the four quadrants of D.C. and get some great food from mom and pop places.

If you are a history buff you would love D.C. You can travel down the National Mall and go in museum after museum, or just picnic on the grass and enjoy the view of the Capitol. You can head further down and view the Washinngton Monument the newly constructed World War II memorial and the Lincoln Memorial, with its well known statue of Lincoln facing the Capitol. You may venture a little further out and visit the Vietnam memorial, the Iwo Jima statue or the Thomas Jefferson memorial which of course faces the White House. If you want to take a short metro ride into Northern Virginia you can visit the Arlington Cemetary and sit where General Robert E. Lee wrote his resignation letter from the United States military. If you enjoy visiting battlefields, then it is a short drive to Gettysburg, Bull Run, and Harpers Ferry. There is never a shortage of history.

If you feel like traveling around D.C. you can, but be forewarned, South East D.C. is the murder capitol of the United States. I worked in South East D.C. for awhile and it was a great experience but you have to know where to go and where not to go. The food is great in these areas, and if you want a cultural experience the four quadrants of D.C. are great to visit, but poverty is rampant. I worked with some kids in these areas who had no idea where the Capitol was. They had never been out of a ten block by ten block radius, and they were in their teens. You will be traveling from the most powerful house in the world to an area that has some of the worst poverty in America.

While it is a sad truth, it nonetheless makes D.C. a different place to live than anywhere in America. No where else can you get this sharp contrast that I have described in the above paragraphs. Even reading this article you can imagine the sharp differences. Because of the extreme power and wealth, coupled with historical places and some of the worst poverty in America, D.C. is one of the most interesting places to live and its uniqueness makes it stand out above all else.

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