I had forgotten about this photo I snapped from atop the Washington Monument a few weeks ago and just found it on my hard drive. You're looking north through the city at The Elipse (the National Christmas Tree is that little green triangle at it's top) and the White House just north of that. From up here, you can see the idea of Pierre L'Enfant's original wheel-and-spoke design of the District. Of course, this photo might be a little misleading because what you are looking at is not actually the center of the wheel. L'Enfant's plan had streets running like spokes from the center of the wheel where The Capitol sat, not the White House. But there are a lot of traffic circles of death in D.C. so it's easy to get confused.
That reminds me of a story The KingofHearts often tells about how before we met, he went downtown with some friends and a girl he was trying to date. They were walking around at night and she looked up at the building and said with pretentious awe in her voice, "Just think. Our President is in there sleeping right at this moment."

There were only two problems with her statement.

One) the President was out of the country during that particular week.

and

Two) this is the building they were looking up at:


I guess L'Enfant's plan got the better of her too.