6 Turn right on Ellicott Street NW.
7 Turn right on Connecticut Avenue NW.
8 Turn left on Nebraska Avenue NW.
9 Turn right on Fort Drive NW.
10 Turn left on a gravel path.
11 Turn right on Chesapeake Street NW.
12 Turn left on 41st Street NW.
13 Turn left on Wisconsin Avenue NW.
14 Exit the library and cross Wisconsin Avenue NW for the Metro.
CONNECTING THE WALKS
For Walk 4 (Foxhall and Beyond), continue south on Wisconsin Avenue NW and turn right on Nebraska Avenue NW.
DC Water and Sewer Authority’s stately towers
3 NATIONAL ZOO TO NATIONAL CATHEDRAL: HOMES SWEET HOMES
BOUNDARIES: Woodley Road NW, Connecticut Avenue NW, Calvert Street NW, and Wisconsin Avenue NW
DISTANCE: 2 miles (excluding the zoo’s multiple paths)
DIFFICULTY: Easy, excluding the zoo; moderate to strenuous if taking an optional trek through the hilly zoo
PARKING: 2-hour limited street parking; parking lots at Omni Shoreham, National Zoo, and National Cathedral; Metro recommended
PUBLIC TRANSIT: Woodley Park–Zoo/Adams Morgan Metro. Metrobuses 96, 97, and X3 link the Woodley Park Metro to the cathedral.
Everyone loves pandas. The National Zoo’s übercute cub, Bao Bao, even scored a birthday tweet from First Lady Michelle Obama. Although the Giant Panda “palace” is enough of a reason to trek to the zoo, 1,800 other cute critters also reside within the 163-acre oasis. After schlepping around the animals’ hillside homes, it’s only a short walk past fashionable human homes and hotels to one of the city’s most elaborate houses of God—the Washington National Cathedral, which is the sixth-largest cathedral in the world. Along the way are the Swiss ambassador’s ultra-edgy residence and a newly public garden by the Post cereal heir’s former mansion.
Start at the Woodley Park–Zoo/Adams Morgan Metro station at Connecticut Avenue NW and 24th Street NW. Walk south on 24th Street NW past apartments and eateries, and turn right on Calvert Street NW for the Omni Shoreham Hotel on the left. This elegant hotel overlooks verdant Rock Creek Park and its hiker-biker trail. A famous fixture since 1930 (it was even a Kennedy hangout), these days it’s best known for hosting families and conventions. In 1964, its fame went viral when the Beatles called it home during their first American concert (see Walk 24, NoMa and Union Market). They spent a few hours performing at the Washington Coliseum, but they spent a few days in Suite 625, the hotel says. A plaque on the door proclaims it the “Beatles Suite.”
After the hotel, reverse direction on Calvert Street NW to head east. Turn left on Connecticut Avenue NW for Lebanese Taverna restaurant on the right. This family-owned, Arlington-based company has been pleasing palates with its hummus, tabouleh, and other yummy specialties from their homeland since 1979. It’s one of the Abi-Najm family’s 11 Lebanese Taverna eateries.
Continue north on Connecticut Avenue NW for Wardman Tower on the left. Once home to luminaries such as Presidents Herbert Hoover, Dwight Eisenhower, and Lyndon Johnson; vice presidents; members of Congress; two Supreme Court chief justices; and Hollywood legend Marlene Dietrich, it has been part of the Washington Marriott Wardman Park hotel since 1998. Now the 1928 annex is being converted into 32 prestigious, private residences.
Walk north on Connecticut Avenue NW, past upscale apartments and condos to the (free and must-see) Smithsonian National Zoological Park on the right. Among its roughly 1,800 residents are some rarities, the zoo says, such as a Micronesian kingfisher (one of 129 in the world) and Sumatran tigers (400 live on the planet). The lush green zoo is well known for its many public programs, including “Snore and Roar” sleepovers for adults and kids. What isn’t well known is that it’s also a “geologist’s paradise,” says the zoo’s history. A fault zone burrows beneath it. The zoo straddles the boundary or fall line between two major geographic provinces: the Piedmont (hilly with ancient, hard igneous and metamorphic rocks) and the Coastal Plain (flat with younger, softer gravel, sand, and clay). The lone visible fault is at the southeastern edge of the zoo across Rock Creek Parkway. (See Walk 9, Adams Morgan.)
After the zoo, reverse direction on Connecticut Avenue NW. Turn right on Cathedral Avenue NW. On the left at 29th Street NW is the private Embassy of Switzerland. The ambassador’s avant-garde home on the compound opened in 2006. Designed by a team of American and Swiss architects, its black and white façades (charcoal-colored concrete and sand-blasted structural glass planks) were inspired by the rugged, snow-covered Swiss Alps, the embassy says. The Swiss sponsor movies, concerts, and other cultural events at their embassy and around the city.
Turn right on 29th Street NW to head north past some of the gracious historic houses that typify the surrounding Woodley Park and Cleveland Park neighborhoods. Turn left on Cortland Place NW, which dead-ends at the pedestrian entrance to the Tregaron Conservancy park at the Washington International School. Trails loop through the lush valley below the hilltop school. Marjorie Merriweather Post’s brick mansion atop the hill is now part of the private school. The Post cereal heir and her husband, Ambassador Joseph E. Davies, lived at this 20-acre enclave until they divorced and she moved to her Hillwood Estate (now a museum) in 1955. The nonprofit conservancy opened Tregaron to the public in 2006. Just outside the garden to the west is the 26-room Twin Oaks mansion, built by National Geographic Society founder Gardiner Hubbard in 1888. Now his wooden home on 18 acres of that estate is a private cultural center owned by the Taiwan government. To the east is long-closed Klingle Road NW. Construction began in July 2015 to transform it into the Klingle Valley hiker-biker trail.
Exit Tregaron and turn right to head west on Klingle Road NW. Turn right on Woodley Road NW for the Washington National Cathedral’s side entrance on the left. This Gothic cathedral was a work in progress from 1907 to 1990. Construction had to begin anew in 2011 to fix damages caused by a rare earthquake. The Indiana limestone landmark is the tallest man-made point in Washington. Its website says it rises 676 feet above sea level: the central tower is 301 feet 3 inches high, and it was built on Mount St. Albans, which is about 375 feet above sea level. Helen Keller is buried there, along with President Woodrow Wilson. The cathedral has hosted 11 presidential funerals and memorials. Visitors can attend services or drop a dime on an insider’s tour to view the 231 stained glass windows, 112 gargoyles, and other historic architectural details, including a modern-day oddity: a Darth Vader sculpture. It was added in the 1980s during a children’s sculpture competition. The pedestrian-friendly grounds are home to Olmsted Woods, “one of the few old growth forests still standing in the nation’s capital,” the church says; the private National Cathedral School for girls; and the private St. Albans School for boys. Vice President Al Gore was a junior there when he attended the 1964 Beatles concert. Gore isn’t the only one with swell memories of those days, The Washington Post reported in 2010. “The trip to Washington is a very romantic time in my memory,” said Beatle Paul McCartney.
D.C.’S OWN (SQUIRRELY) PLYMOUTH ROCK
The year 1902 might be remembered elsewhere as the date the first Automat opened, but in Washington it marks a memorable if not momentous event in mammal history. That’s when the National Zoo released eight “Pilgrim” black squirrels along the rocky, northwestern edge of the zoo by its Connecticut Avenue NW entrance. The glossy black mammals were imported as part of a squirrel exchange with Canada. After a second release of 10 more in 1906, today the descendants of these unusual squirrels