When you hear people talk about Washington D.C., you may want to know what the letters D.C. mean. They mean "District of Columbia". Washington, the capital city of the USA, is in the District of Columbia, not, as you might expect, in the State of Washington. Washington State is thousands of miles away on the northwest coast. (There are also several other towns called Washington in the United States.) Washington D.C. lies between Virginia and Maryland on the Potomac River. It’s about 220 miles south of New York City. The pleasantest and easiest way to get there is by long-distance bus, or by the fast (125-mile-an-hour) train which costs a little more than the bus journey and a little less than flying. I would travel far more than 220 miles to see Washington. It’s not a city that has grown up accidentally as most big cities have done. It was carefully planned as the nation’s capital by a Frenchman, Pierre L’ Enfant. The city was named after George Washington, the much-loved, much-admired, much- respected first President of the United States. In 1791 he himself arranged to buy the land on which it stands. The capital city of the United States is in the ______.
A. State of Washington B. District of Columbia C. State of New York D. southern part of the country