6-1-17 Washington DC

Mike and Maria from Aquafennatic, Karen and Mark from Captain’s Choice, Scott and I took a bus from Annapolis right to the Library of Congress. It is the largest Library in the world with 23,892,068 book catalogued. Along with music, newspaper pamphlets technical reports and non-classified items totaling an impressive 160,775,260 items. The items are in 450 different languages. The general public cannot take out items from this library.  That is understandable.

We then went to the Capital visitors center.  We got there early but Holy Moley there a lot of people there. We learned to get a tour you have to get it through your State Representative or Senate office to get tickets.  That seems odd. But that is how it is.  Without a ticket you were allowed to wait in line for No-Shows.  It could be right away or hours.  No thanks.  We are trying to do all of DC in one day on foot. No time for waiting around.

From the Capital we went to the Old Post Office Building, which is now the Trump Hotel.  Of course, we walked in expecting to get stopped.  We used the restrooms and gawked at the glass covered atrium. I was told I cannot take photos with my camera, but may take them with my phone. Couldn’t figure that one out. We heard from other loopers that on certain days of the week we could go into the clock tower. We asked an attendant where to go and we were directed to the back side of the hotel, (where the likes of us belong.  Ha Ha.) We had a beautiful view of DC.

 

On to the White House.  We were a little farther away than we expected but we got a glimpse of it.

Right behind us was the Washington Monument.  By this time we were in awe of everything we had seen, but started to run out of words. It is so huge.  Did you know that you used to be able to go to the top, but after an earthquake that is no longer possible.

 

 

From there we walked along the reflective pool. Funny thing was, we all reflected on the Scene from Forrest Gump.

 

My cousin, Steve Satran, lives in DC and met us at the Lincoln Memorial for a brief visit. It was so good to see him.  I love how this trip has brought us together to friends and relatives we have seen in a long time due to the distance.

Vietnam War Monument was moving with the huge walls with all names of the soldiers that died. I have seen it on TV 100 times but seeing it in person, and realizing how many people died was very thought provoking.

The Lincoln Memorial surprised me the most.  Because I have seen it in so many pictures, movies etc, I thought I knew what it was like.  When I walked in and saw the massive size of this magnificent piece of art, I was in awe.

We had never really seen the Korean War Monument before.  There was a wall like at the Vietnam Monument, but instead of names they engraved faces into the stone.  There was also silver statues of them men dressed as they would be going through the jungle. It was very well done. Steve told us the way they have it lit at night makes it more impressive.it is really impressive.

 

We were tired after walking the entire thing, but glad we did. We never got into the Smithsonian, but there just aren’t enough hours in the day. We are thankful for what we do get to see and don’t regret the things we missed.

We were thankful to have a bus driver driving us in the crazy snarl of traffic at the end of the day. We sat back and relaxed. Word of advice…Don’t drive there.

Thank you for reading,

Karen and Scott

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