The White House

Every day on my way home from work I walk up Pennsylvania Avenue and past the White House. It's a hugely enigmatic building, and it's striking in its simplicity both from the front and from the back. I'd go so far as to say that it's a good job the British didn't succeed in burning it to the ground. Not that the same can be said for the horribly over the top Eisenhower Executive Building to the west - if that had been around in 1812 it should have been the first to go.


On Tuesday last week I finally got a chance to go inside, and as a result got the morning off work as well. Unfortunately the wonderful Washington DC weather conspired, as it so often does, to catch me without an umbrella and hence by the time I'd finished waiting in the (surprisingly short) queue to get inside, I was soaked through. But, of course, the sunny smiles of all the security staff practically dried me out.

The tour itself is odd. Given the security, the ban on cameras, and the difficulty in getting on a tour, I was expecting it to be guided once you got inside to keep people together, but it's self guided, to the extent that you can spend as long as you want inside. Practically, the pathway is clearly marked and narrow enough to make sure that the line keeps moving, and there's security at every turn to keep you in check. You don't actually get to see that much once inside apart from the state rooms, which are very... stately. I've heard others compare it to a British National Trust property, and it's not a bad comparison to make. Of course, it is very grand inside, everything is in its rightful place and there is an innate grandeur, it's not exceptional. Perhaps the hurried nature of the process through didn't help - it only took about 25 minutes from walking in to walking out - and at the end of the day I can at least say I've been inside the White House, but the rooms we walked through obviously aren't typical of the property. I guess it's been spoiled by the promise of TV's the West Wing!

Last year's ESU interns were fantastically lucky in that they by chance met the White House Press Secretary at a reception and who later organised a personal tour of the White House for them, including a visit to the Oval Office. Now that would have been quite something indeed.