Washington D.C. at last

Well, I tried to organize the pictures. But it didn't work. All my organization attempts are at the bottom of the page. Wha'cha gonna do?

The pic over there is of a mobile by Alexander Calder (I think). I was excited to see it in the modern art museum because it's the only work of art I remember looking at in 10th grade in my sculpture class.







My next pic is in Arlington. We met up with some friends from our days in Europe. We also walked the memorials with them.

Shauna, mom and I ended up walking the memorials two days in a row. Our feet ached so bad that the last day we just went from bench to bench. Poor mom had a tour starting two days after we left.








This pic is the Library of Congress. I went ahead and got a Library card even though they have signs everywhere saying that they are not souveneirs. Please, of course they are.


Anyway, it's an absolutely wonderful building that only actually holds a fraction of all the books in the library on congress. To reduce chances of a fire, there was no wood in the building. it's all various types of rock.

Needless to say, I fell in love with this building.




In accordance with our society, someone felt it was necessary to add a statue of Roosevelt in his wheel chair to his memorial even though there is a huge statue of him later (with his dog). He spent so much of his political life hiding his wheelchair. So this is my question: Is the last laugh on him or us?













At Arlington we went and saw the tomb of the unknown soldier. The changing of the guards was pretty impressive. The moment it was over, the guard announced that the cemetary was closed and was now a restricted area. He basically kicked us all out. Some of the families practically ran out. We slowly walked out. I think we all secretly wondered what they would do if we didn't leave.
Also impressive was the unguarded tomb of the unknown soldiers from the civil war. I'm not sure why they don't get protection.
Over all, I loved the cemetary, as I do all our Military Cemetaries. I find them peaceful and beautiful reminders of the sacrifices that others have made for me. I feel so blessed to be a part of this country. I have such a respect for our military. While it would be ideal to live in a world were we didn't need one, I'm grateful to live in a country that is so willing to help preserve the freedoms of others.














Near the war memorials, is the Einstein Statue. Shauna and I enjoyed the moment to sit on the lap of a genius and think our own deep thoughts- what's for lunch?














We enjoyed the war memorials. There was a lot of thought put into all of them. At the WWII memorial I was touched by many aspects of the memorial, but I was humored to see that they put the "Kilroy was Here" Comic. Take the time to google Kilroy, I think you'll be amused.

I was so impressed by all the memorials.














My camera ran out of batteries, so I went into a store and bought four batteries. My camera only needs two. Within a day, the first set were dead. If you look closely, you'll see these batteries were from a disposable camera. They certainly got me. At least it gave me a good laugh. But I mostly put this up to warn all you other simple westerners that those big cities are ruthless. Ruthless, I tell you.





The national cathedral was really beautiful. It's one of the largest cathedrals in the world. It's actually not a national cathedral, because we don't have a national religion, but every thing in D.C. is called a national something or other. But the light was coming in just right and it was beautiful. It wasn't finished until a few years ago. One of the grotesques on one of the towers is of Darth Vader.




I really wanted to go to the botanical gardens, so I lucked out when it turned out that it held the closest restrooms to the capitol building. My lunch didn't agree with me, so I got to enjoy their toilets a couple times (don't get the chicken tenders at the art museum). I enjoyed my walk through the gardens. I don't remember much of the tour of the capitol. I spent most of the tour sitting on the stoops of statues wishing I could curl up into the fetal position. I prayed several times that I could lose my lunch, but I never did. Luckily after the tour, I was able to enjoy the botanical gardens some more.
It was absolutely incredible though. I love gardens and this one was magnificent. Someday when I'm too rich for my own good, I will have a garden like this. And gardeners to take care of it.



This is where my slide show originally began. So things will be slightly more organized from here on out.

We've all seen the sights of DC, so I've opted to post the not so typical pics.

Day 1. Our hotel was near the Marine Memorial. I had just finished reading a book on Iwo Jima, so I made Shauna listen to me prattle on about the whole battle.

Near the memorial, was the the Carrillon Bells the Dutch gave to the US in gratitude for WWII as seen here.

Well, we then headed over and met mom at Mount Vernon where she was leaving her tour group for the day.

You may recognize mount vernon from such movies as national treasure 2. In fact on one of my mom's tours a couple years back, she arrived just after they finished filming there and got us all free t-shirts.

After walking around and realizing how little I know about George Washington, we headed back to DC.

We went to the national archives to see the declaration of independence and other documents of significants. A disney worthy line greeted us and we waited forever to see the stuff. When we finally got in, we discovered much to our amazement another line. The documents were interesting, but the cool thing was to see the rest of the archives. There were letters from people to the presidents and recently unsealed confidential documents about various events in our history.

The next day we went up to Phileadelphia to see Independence Hall and the Liberty bell. Shauna was a little excited to be there. She did this like ten times. It was soooooo embarrassing.

In one of the museums they have a room full of statues of all the signers of the Declaration.

As it turns out, it was quite a scandelous experience.

After wondering the streets and visiting other noteworthy places, which I'm not going to note, we went to the fine arts museum. You may know the museum from such movies as Rocky.

And in case you didn't they put a rather large statue of Sylvester outside.
So, it was a great trip. Very educational and it definitely rejuvenated my love and respect for the country I live in. I gained a greater appreciation for the wisdom of our founding fathers. If you want to see the rest of the pics, come visit me and I'll give you a super long slide show. Digital cameras are great, but even better are the little memory cards I can put in mine that lets me take 5 billion pictures each vacation.