The Confessions of an Intern taking a White House Tour

 

I had the privilege of taking a White House Tour this summer in D.C., and while the tour was a little underwhelming, it was still a great experience. To get admission to a White House tour you have to provide a lot of information for their security office to perform a background check, and it takes months for most to get confirmation for the tour which can be problematic for planning a vacation to D.C.

      Fortunately, I was able to get a tour through my internship office, and I met others from my office there early that morning before the 8 a.m. tour. You are essentially not allowed to bring anything into the White House except for keys, a wallet and your cell phone. Purses and many other things are not allowed, but unfortunately a member of my group did not remember that. In the short period of time before the tour hijinks ensued as she attempted to put her purse in a safe place or get someone to watch it for her. In the end this did not work out and after a few unfortunate events she was not able to go on the tour, so the moral of this story is to make sure you bring approved items to the White House.

     Once inside you are pretty much left to yourself to journey through the rooms you are allowed to view until you get to the front entrance of the White House which is the exit of the tour. There are no tour guides to explain things to you, so the trick is to talk to the security guards in every room as they are well versed in the history of each room. This made my tour much more enjoyable than it would have been as I was given this tip before hand, and I learned a lot about the architecture and history of each individual room.

     The best part of tour was getting to exit out the front entrance and then take as many pictures as I wanted in front of the White House.  As you can see above I took advantage of this whole heartedly. As we were leaving I was asked by a tour group if I was a security guard, which I can only assume they thought because I was in a suit.  Apparently they were not aware that security guards would not be taking thousands of pictures in front of the White House, but I nonetheless had to disappoint them and tell them I was not a security guard.

     Despite the brevity of the tour and having to disappoint those who thought I was a security guard, getting to go to the White House was truly an experience I will never forget!

AH