My feet were aching, and my mind was overflowing. For three days we toured Washington-and every night we went to bed satisfied and exhausted!!! We saw the Lincoln memorial, and walked through a handful of the Smithsonians, and toured the House of Representatives, among a couple of other things! One of my favourite experiences was the changing of the guard at the tomb of the unknown soldier. It was amazing how the guards never smiled walking back and forth with everyone’s heads swinging back and forth watching them!
We rode the Subway from our campground to Washington everyday! It was great fun when no one else was on the train. You could tell we were tourists…
The first thing we visited on Wednesday, April fifth, was the Lincoln Memorial. The statue was huge and the building was ginormous! There were people everywhere, and we soon figured out the reason. One, it is Washington, so there are bound to be people everywhere, and two it was the Cherry Blossom Festival that week. As we left here and were heading towards the Washington Monument we walked by the wall that has the names of all the soldiers who died or are missing in the Vietnam War.
The Washington Monument was quite a sight to behold-even though it just looked like a giant tower with a couple of windows at the top! Dad took a couple of HDR photos and they turned out looking pretty cool!
The Capitol Building-where the inauguration happens every four years! It is surrounded by the House of Representatives on one side and the United States Senate on the other!
The roofing inside the House of Representatives was pretty ornate! Our tour took us throughout the building, and into different rooms. Everywhere we went the roof had some sort of design to it. It was gorgeous!
On Thursday it poured rain!!! And it was windy! Our umbrellas helped keep 80% of the water off of us, but the other twenty percent got us pretty wet! While we were in line to get into the Air and Space Smithsonian Museum the rain was coming at us at an angle so we paired off and put one umbrella vertical, and the other umbrella horizontal!!! It worked very well!
First stop Thursday morning was the Art Museum, which has the only Leonardo da Vinci painting in North America! This isn’t it, but Mom wanted to show Grandma that we saw a Vincent Van Gogh painting, too! Don’t be fooled by our expressions – art museums are not the most exciting thing in the world. In fact, they are incredibly boring. Except when we were trying to hide our eyes from all the naked statues.
We stopped into the Air and Space Museum quickly to eat lunch and see the first original Wright flyer! I thought it would look kind of like it was falling apart-but it didn’t! (Probably because the museum had replaced the fabric on the wings.)
Next on the list for Thursday was the National Museum of Natural History. They had so many dead, stuffed animals everywhere-which was super cool! Although the way the animals are set up in this picture looks rather comical! There was an amazing wing that had some of the beautiful nature pictures that I have ever seen! From animals to rainbows they were all GORGEOUS!!!!!
And, of course, the White House! It is smaller than I thought it was going to be but it was still probably bigger than most other houses I’ve seen!?
Friday was the Zoo! The lions were fighting, so that was probably one of the most exciting zoos I’ve ever been to before!
Sometimes the escalators into and out of the Subways were super long so most of us took advantage of them and sat down!? I had never before seen such long escalators!!!
The last thing we did in Washington was the Arlington National Cemetery. We walked past so many graves-husbands and wives, sometimes even little babies.?
The Changing of the Guard was amazing!!! The guards are the best and are very educated-they have to know where at least 300 graves in the cemetery are located, and who’s buried there. (Google them-it’s fascinating!)
Our time in Washington was only three days but they were very full, exhausting, satisfying days. I’d highly recommend a visit there if you get the chance!
That was a great write up Kenna. The photos are good too. Too bad you did not have a few more days. There is the Spy Museum, the Holocaust Museum, which are really interesting and memorable. Also you can do a tour of the White House inside. But there will be a next time. When you get to New York City be sure to take the boat tour around Manhattan, go on top of the Empire State Building and have lunch at the Palm Restaurant and visit 150 5th Avenue where I had my offices for the Capitalist Reporter and 240 Central Park South where I lived and the First Hungarian Baptist Church, where I was in fellowship before finding the assembly. Lots of love Grandad.