The Capitol Tour Conundrum

I’m about to let you in on the best deal in all of Washington DC. For absolutely no charge, you can get a private tour with House and Senate access and no queuing up if you call ahead of your visit and schedule a capitol tour through your congressman’s office. If you are a tourist visiting the Capitol, I cannot recommend this highly enough.  While for the tourist, “Private Capitol Tour” is a star studded term of glorious victory, for the new capitol intern these words sound slightly more like a legion of Scotsmen led by William Wallace charging down upon you.

Learning to give a tour is a baptism by fire.  On either your first or second day in the office, you have the opportunity to trail along with another more experienced  intern and their tour and take notes on all the historical facts and how to navigate the Capitol. After this, you actually lead a tour and the more experienced intern tags along to make sure you aren’t lost, cruel, or making up lies about the United States of America. That’s it. Training complete. Good Luck and God speed.

Needless to say, the first solo tour any one intern gives is a bit of a crap shoot. Most people are either super great at navigating, but struggle with facts, or have the facts down pat, but can’t find their way out of a paper bag. I am of the second group. For those of us who struggle with disnavigatia (a totally false disorder) you hope that the people on your first run through are able bodied, ready to traverse great distances, and are neither elderly nor very young.  Unfortunately, my first tour consisted of a family with three small children 5 and under, the parents, and Grandma.

The tour started out rocky. Unable to find my first stop, the cornerstone of the capitol, I was also unable to locate the original Supreme Court room (both big crowd pleasers). Hopelessly lost, I made the executive decision to skip them for now and hope that their location came to me by the end of the tour. [Mildly] Certain that my group had not noticed my struggle, I headed to the crypt. Here, I gave a fabulous rendition of the facts pointing out the original House office clock which hung until 1949 when the new room was built, and the empty tomb of George Washington which lies at the heart of the Capitol. I even managed to make it down the Hall of Columns and show off the first statue donated by Texas, but upon returning to the crypt I had to make a guess on which way to proceed. Fortunately, I weighed my instincts, chose exactly the opposite direction from my internal compass and managed to make it into Statuary Hall. Here I again dazzled, showing the various statues and telling their stories as well as pointing out the desk positions of former presidents while they were in Congress and even demonstrating the “whisper spots”. From here I had merely to cross the hall to the Rotunda where I gave the histories of each of the artworks and statues and even showed them where a capitol artist had slipped from his perch painting the dome and fallen to his tragic death (another crowd pleaser).  Normally this is where we conclude the tours and head into the House, however, I felt guilty having gipped this family out of two huge sights and so I made the executive decision to assuage my guilt by striking off on a journey to the center of the Capitol.

About 20 minutes, 3 staircases, 3 whining children, and 1 exhausted grandmother later I realized my horrible mistake. I began apologizing profusely and asking passing interns in a somewhat panicked fashion how to get to the cornerstone. Finally after abandoning all my pride to ask a capitol tour guide how to escape the underground clutches of the capitol. I escorted the weary tour group to the court room. Unfortunately, this whole debacle had caused us to miss our chance to enter the House and the all the all access tour they had called ahead for was ruined. I have never been so embarrassed in my life. I apologized profusely and encouraged them to come back and use their passes sometime soon since they are good for 22 months.

After parting ways I returned, defeated from my first tour. The next morning, still riddled with guilt, I came in early and I spent 30 minutes walking my route over and over so as to never get lost again. To date I have now give five more tours and they have all been flawless, however, I’ve still felt guilty about that first tour. Today my supervisor received an email from that family calling me, “pleasant, informative, and a pleasure.”

Intern Lesson #2, Fake it ‘til you make it: Passed.