The Library of Congress

01_6.10.2012

The Library of Congress is one of the biggest libraries in the world, its collections include more than 167 million items. Established in the early nineteenth century literally for the U. S. president, vice president and members of the both houses of the Congress, it’s now open for any adult readers including foreign citizens. The library is physically housed in three buildings at the very center of Washington, right in front of the Capitol. The oldest is the Thomas Jefferson Building, constructed in 1890–97. The second one, the John Adams Building, was constructed in the 1930s (opened for the public in 1939), after the Jefferson Building has run out of space. The James Madison Memorial Building was constructed in 1971–76 and opened in 1980; it’s the biggest one of the three buildings. It wasn’t enough either, however, so one more storage was built later outside the city.

All the three buildings are connected by underground passageways that is quite convenient. For me, the Jefferson Building is the nicest one, so all the photos are from there. The access to the entrance hall, by the way, is open for all the visitors; the library card is required only in the working area.

03-04_29.03.2013

05_29.03.2013

06_29.03.2013

Continue reading

Klingle Road—a ruined street in Washington, D.C.

Klingle Road is a small street in Washington, D.C., just near Macomb Street where I lived in 2012–13.  By now, it has been already repaired and transformed into a walking root, but eight years ago it was out of use and even closed to motor traffic.  The cause was that the main part of the road lies in a ravine, so that it used to be flooded by water and mud from the slopes after every heavy rain.  At the same time there are no houses at Klingle Road itself, all the nearest buildings look to other streets.  If I hadn’t been shown this street at the beginning of my stay in Washington, I would probably haven’t even noticed it at all.  The street is not too long, surrounded by nice and comfortable residential areas.  Its eastern end leads to Washington Zoo.  To see such a ‘secret’ small area of desolation at the heart of a big city was especially surprising.

Klingle Road
On 26 January 2013 I finally managed to take a photo of snow in Washington.  The previous days, it fell in the morning and melted away while I was having breakfast 😉

Continue reading

Alexandria, Virginia

American town of Alexandria, Virginia, is one of the oldest towns in the country, founded in mid-eighteenth century, and the first settlements of European colonists emerged there already in late seventeenth century.  The town is near Washington, on the opposite bank of the Potomac River.  In 1791, Alexandria was included in the newly established District of Columbia, but in 1846 the federal government returned it to the State of Virginia.  The town in quite nice, with old streets and neighborhoods, so you certainly ought to see it if you ever come to Washington.

I was in Alexandria twice—in 2012 and in 2017.  The pictures below are made in 2012, when I was there together with Claudia Galloppa. It was in October, in the midst of autumn, on the eve of Halloween and of the presidential elections 😉

DSC_0267_01

DSC_0281

DSC_0283 Continue reading

Air and Space Museum in Washington

The Air and Space Museum is located in the very centre of Washington, at the National Mall.  Like the majority of Washington museums, it is part of Smithsonian Institution, so the entrance is free of charge, but donations are welcome.

Something brought from other planets is certainly kept inside these stony cubes 😉
Voyager.  The first non-stop and non-refuelled flight around the world was made on this plane in 1986.
The car of Breitling Orbiter 3 stratospheric balloon.  Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones made in it a non-stop flight around the world in 1999.  It was the first flight like that made in a balloon.

Continue reading

Washington, part 1

At last I’ve put my American photos in order. There are quite a lot of them, in spite of all my attempts to filter out uninteresting ones, so I’ll divide them into several galleries. Hope they’ll be interesting for you too 🙂 Most of them were made in Washington where I spent six months and had a good opportunity to study the city rather carefully, at least the downtown. Let me start with just some interesting pictures without any general subject:

Вашингтон Continue reading