Washington DC dreams

The kindly, charismatically portrayed President (played spookily well by Daniel Day-Lewis) achieves his goal shortly before being shot while watching a play at the Ford Theatre in Washington on April 14, 1865. He dies the following day.

Another charismatic leader influenced by Lincoln, famed for his speeches, and whose life was also taken by a bullet, 45 years ago in Memphis on April 4, 1968, was Martin Luther King Jr (King may soon have his own biopic as Bourne Ultimatum director Paul Greengrass is rumoured to be shooting a docu?drama- style film, with Forest Whitaker playing the lead). My family and I arrive in the cleaned-up US capital the day before this anniversary, although it is his birthday, Martin Luther King Day, that is celebrated as a National Holiday each year on the third Monday of January.

We stay in the W Hotel, a block from the White House, a slickly-renovated 317-room Beaux Arts building decked out with a cult-Bliss Spa, playfully dramatic lobby with red leather chairs on a chequered floor and a silver canister providing hot syrupy apple cider taking the chill out of the unseasonably cold April weather. Spring is the capital?s famed cherry blossom season but blooms are slow.

Conveniently next door is the Willard Intercontinental where, on August 28 1963, King put the finishing touches to his seminal ?I have a dream? speech before delivering it to an audience of a quarter of a million people from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at the famous March on Washington For Jobs and Freedom.

The famous photograph of the civil rights leader, hand raised in a salute to the crowds below, hangs in our living room and is largely what prompted our trip to Washington. As a mixed-race family, it resonates. Fortified by bowls of creamy porridge in the Willard?s abundant breakfast caf?, we pass crystal chandeliers, marble mosaic floors and Corinthian columns to study the hotel?s history gallery before heading to the Lincoln Memorial, with its 38 Grecian columns. The exact spot where King stood is marked on the stone.

Not far from here, in this leafy park dominated by memorials and monuments, stands the Stone of Hope. A 30-foot granite statue of King faces across the cherry blossom-fringed Tidal Basin to the domed Jefferson Memorial. The first black man ? and non-president ? to be honoured in this way, surprisingly it was only erected in 2011. I?m not sure I could say I liked it aesthetically, with its strange peachy-white hue, but it has the respect of being the highest memorial in the area.

Across the road, the contemporary glass-cubed gift shop is noticeably less full of tack than most (bad-taste presidential tie from the nearby White House gift shop, anyone?). My daughter selects a children?s book of King?s life story.

The slim volume is quickly read and while seeing her eyes well up as she reads of black children having cigarettes stubbed out on them is a sad sight, I?m aware that for us, being a mixed-race family in modern Britain is no big deal ? in Fifties America it would have been very different.

Barely 15 minutes by cab, but a world away from the marble monuments of the pristine National Mall, lies the U-Street district known as the ?Black Broadway? during the years of segregation for its theatres and jazz clubs where Duke Ellington, Miles Davis and Ella Fitzgerald performed before dining at Ben?s Chili Bowl ? as did King.

During the race riots that plagued Washington in 1968 following the assassination of King, this family-run diner, opened by Trinidadian immigrant Ben Ali and his wife 10 years earlier in a former theatre, was one of the few establishments that not only stayed open but was a refuge to both blacks and whites. Fast food became soul food for the army of regulars.

Bill Cosby is unofficial ambassador, having met his wife here, and even conducted a press conference here to celebrate his eponymous number one show. Famously, for years a sign hung behind the counter stating ?List of who eats free at Ben?s: Bill Cosby. No one else.? In 2008, the sign was amended to add Obama (although the then-President elect did pay) after he tucked into a well-documented chilli dog with cheese fries (you can watch the whooping-filled video on YouTube).

Both Obama and Cosby are honoured in a colourfully cartoonish mural on the brick wall of Ben Ali Way running along the exterior wall ? as we exit, there?s a growing line of people queuing up for their fix. I?m no fast-food freak but it?s a warm, atmospheric place kept going by Ben?s sons.

These days, the regenerated area buzzes with life ? we pass galleries, stores and revitalised late Victorian row houses ? and it?s still said to be the best spot in the city to hear jazz.?

Home to the historically black Howard University, where Ben Ali studied dentistry, the U-Street corridor retains its strong black heritage. A self-guided Heritage Trail of the area includes the African American Civil War Memorial opposite the African American Civil War Museum.

It?s time for some fun for our daughter Maya. Enter the International Spy Museum near China Town (highly recommended for children, with its noisy interactive exhibits, and an entire floor dedicated to James Bond). While Maya and her dad try to break a spy code, I spot a small photograph of Harriet Tubman.

She is not really known in the UK, but 2013 is the centenary of this remarkable woman who escaped brutal slavery in the South to become a leading abolitionist, helping other slaves escape along the network of safe houses known as the Underground Railroad. During the American Civil War, Tubman? worked as a spy liberating more than 700 slaves in South Carolina.

Getting from sight to sight is fairly easy in compact central Washington. Its Big Bus open-top double-decker tours (therefore better in warmer months) have colour-coded loops (tours), with the Red Loop taking in landmarks such as the Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr Memorials as well as the White House (disappointingly small in real life), the Ford Theater and the Spy Museum.

The W Hotel is just around the corner from Pennsylvania Avenue, which heads diagonally until the white-domed Capitol Hill, where you can hop on the bus passing the FBI headquarters, the National Archives where Alex Haley researched Roots and the National Council of Negro Women, part of the African American Heritage Trail.

It is also home to the innovative Newseum, where you could easily spend a weekend ? there?s a reason a ticket gives you two consecutive days? entry ? which shows a chunk of the Berlin Wall, a fragment of the World Trade Center and Pulitzer Prize photographs documenting defining, often deeply tragic moments in history (there are also fun bits such as filming your own news reports straight to camera).

One such is a photo of James Meredith, the first black man to attend the University of Mississippi in 1966, lying shot on the ground during his solitary ?March Against Fear? from Memphis to Jackson. King and key civil rights activist Stokely Carmichael took up his cause, with Meredith rejoining once he recovered.

Half a century on, there have undeniably been changes since King?s era ? could he then have foreseen a mixed-race President in the White House? Yet his 1963 vision of an

America where his children ?will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character? still seems far away in an age when President Obama is openly called the N-word on Twitter.

DETAILS: USA

Virgin Holidays has three nights at the W Washington DC and return flights with Virgin Atlantic from Heathrow, from ?995pp room only, virginholidays.co.uk

Ben?s Chili Bowl, benschilibowl.com

Spy Museum, adults $19.95; children $15.95, spymuseum.org

Newseum, adults $21.95; children $12.95. Civil rights at 50, a major three-year exhibition, runs until 2015, newseum.org

capitalregionusa.org; washington.org

Source: http://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/travel/washington-dc-dreams-8787123.html

Kerry Washington magna carta fireworks fireworks 4th of July Brad Stevens wimbledon