May 1 is the kick off of Passport DC, a monthlong celebration of DC’s international culture, and this Saturday is one of the premier events: a day of free tours of foreign embassies.
They call in the Around the World Embassy Tour, and it goes from 10am-4pm in more than 50 embassies around the city. The tours often include a variety of cultural exhibits, music, art and food.
In Columbia Heights, we’re near a few of those: the embassies of Mexico, Ecuador and the Caribbean island of Dominica on 16th Street, all of which are open to the public and completely free to visit. They have an interactive map of all the participating embassies (you can download it also), which includes a few more in Adams Morgan and then others farther afield around Embassy Row and elsewhere in the city.
There are a few other embassies and the like in our area, like the Cuban Embassy (aka the US Interest Section of the Swiss Embassy to Cuba) but they aren’t participating. A lot of the embassies (and former embassies, like the Spanish embassy on the west side of 16th at Euclid) were brought to the area by the Henderson family, who also tried to get the White House to move to Meridian Hill Park.
It sounds like a lot of fun, and I think I’ll try to hit those before the Funk Parade, which is also that Saturday.
