This article is part of FT Globetrotter’s guide to Washington DC
Not long into my first stint living in DC, I bought a bike from an old friend for $200. I spent weekends whizzing down 15th Street, alive with the feeling that nowhere else on earth quite captures power like this place.
I’d pass the White House and the Treasury, where the fate of nations is decided behind grand neoclassical facades. Then I’d glide along the National Mall, past the Washington Monument, and on to the majesty of the Jefferson Memorial before looping round the Tidal Basin and back into the city.
But for all its fascination, Washington has a way of closing in. Before long, a desire to head farther afield crept in.
On one balmy spring day, I braved the gridlocked chaos of the four-lane George Mason Memorial Bridge into Virginia. Dismounting, I found a path. I had accidentally come across the Mount Vernon Trail.
