Welcome to the history tricks where any resemblance to a boring old history lesson is purely coincidental.

Hello and welcome to the show. Today we have a little bit of a different format. We just returned from taking many, many listeners to the great city of Washington, D.C.

In 2021 there was this window between the first vaccines and on a cron and during that window back and I had an opportunity to go to Washington, D.C. We went. There was nobody there. Yes, the Smithsonian's were all closed. There were some museum still open but we had such a wonderful time that when we had an opportunity to bring some of you all with us and go back we just couldn't pass it up.

We were there to we were there to record and film some content for a history channel for network that rhymes with blistery and man all.

Yes and it never aired but that's fine. You know sometimes you go a different direction with your story arcs and you leave it on the cut of room floor.

We got plenty of compliments, some contacts and we actually recorded that in a house that was donated by Marjorie Maryweather Post.

Excellent. I know this was right before we covered her and we walked in the room and saw a plaque that said Marjorie Maryweather Post salon or something.

It was very exciting. Let's just put it that way. Well it was almost just like a sign like hello welcome you're supposed to be here.

So it was good. It was just a tiny little taste of the whole city. We really didn't have the leisure time to cruise around too much and we thought what a missed opportunity that was to not have been able to see most of the indoor places of Washington DC.

And so we returned and we brought dozens of you with us and here is a little postcard from the history chicks field trip to Washington DC 2023.

I thought of the trip a lot as a Russell Stover sampler of field trips because everything was wonderful except it wasn't enough.

You know I could have stayed at any of these places for an entire day and just gotten lost in them. So I think we got to go back or something.

When we came back we posed these questions to the people that were on the tour with us as well as locals who had joined us here and there while we were out and about it things like the Smithsonian that was open.

It wasn't a private tour for us. So we were able to meet a lot of people there and on the dinner crews at the end.

But this is what we asked them to call in and tell us their impressions on these things. One, something that you found very surprising.

Two, something that moved you with an emotion, any emotion. Three, a historical fact that made you think, wow, I never knew that or four, a lesson that you learned because of the trip that wasn't academic, something that you'll carry into your life.

They just had to pick one of those we asked them to call and they responded and we're going to play their recordings for you as we discuss the trip.

So let's start with day one. So on day one of our trip we began with a cocktail reception at Hank's oyster house and we followed this by a trolley tour of the city at night night will tell you the most spectacular thing for me every single time is the fact that a whole group of absolute strangers meets in a bar and within about.

Half an hour you've got groups forming you've got conversations and laughter and it's an amazing development and it even gets deeper throughout the entire trip, but it started off strong. There was even a cocktail.

I'm only laughing because I was like, yeah, we have to talk about the cocktail. It was called two women half the population. It had botanistian, st. Germain, basil, strawberry, lemon, club soda and orange bitters in it. And there was a flower floating on the top. It was perfect.

I'm telling you, you put st. Germain in anything and it elevates it. There's my there's my bartender tip for you. It seems like in every city where we go, there is kind of a mascot. And of course in London, it was high big Ben every time we passed it.

And this time it was the Washington monument. It's visible from a lot of places. We passed it just casually as we were going other places. So we started to say hi monument.

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