Washington, D.C. -- Part 1

The capitol city! We’re here at last. This week is pretty much smack-dab in the center of our trip and I think, for most of us, what we’ve been looking forward to the most. We started out getting situated in our campsite (about 30 miles from the city in Maryland) on Labor Day evening and Tuesday morning. We had heard the best way to do transportation to the city would be to ride the Metro train in and so Tuesday around noon we drove the van to the last stop on the line and bought day passes for all of us. $62.00 later we had our passes and decided we might look into other transportation options for the rest of the day trips to D.C. But it was fun to ride the subway, try to figure out which stops we wanted, and let the kids experience public transit a little.

Our 1st stop dropped us off right in the middle of the Mall, and we walked up and out to our first real-life view of the Capitol at the east end and the Washington Monument at the west. Wow – it was so cool to actually be there! We didn’t have any tours scheduled for this afternoon so we just started walking around, trying to get a grasp of where everything was. HUGE is a good word to describe D.C. The massive stone buildings, the distance between monuments and the monuments themselves, the level of security, the significance of all we were seeing, the amount of information in the museums, the grassy mall…Huge. As we were walking toward the Capitol, we had to stop at a street that was having all traffic held off it, and within a few minutes the President’s motorcade went by, siren’s blaring. Pretty impressive.

That first afternoon we also went out to Arlington National Cemetery. This is a good place to start experiencing D.C. – seeing in no uncertain terms the cost of our freedom. We had our subway passes and took advantage of not having to walk all the way out to the cemetery. The changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is so precise, dignified. We saw three Kennedy tombs, Audie Murphy’s grave, and a fresh, flower-wreathed mound amongst the all those thousands of white headstones. Sobering.

Day 2 – We started out with a tour of the Library of Congress. We had decided to drive all the way in, drop most of us off at whatever building was our first tour, and then have Mike park at Union Station and walk back to wherever we were. So, he got lots of extra exercise this week! That plan only cost $17 a day for parking.

So, the Library – it is gorgeous! The columns, the mosaics, paintings…all with specific significance. Our tour guide was really great and they had these hearing devices we all wore so we could hear all the information. We got to see the Gutenberg Bible and look down into the reading room everyone would recognize from “National Treasure”. If you’re at least 16, you can go into the room, request any books you want and they’ll be brought to your table within 30 minutes. Elizabeth was so disappointed to not be able to do this yet!

After the Library, we split up and Mom, Adri and I took in the National Botanic Garden and the rest went to the Air & Space Museum. The garden was really fun to see – it’s actually several atriums housing different environments or types of flowers – jungle, arid, a room of orchids, medicinal plants – really beautiful and interesting.

The Air & Space Museum was wonderful, too. We got to take in a detailed exhibit on the Wright Brothers which included the first Wright flyer. We ended the day driving out to Dulles Airport where another hanger houses the rest of the museum. There we got up close to a space shuttle, the Enola Gay, a concorde – this museum was a highlight for several in our group. Feet and legs were very tired after all that walking.


Seeing sites for 1st time and figuring out Metro

Air & Space Museum and an orchid at the Botanic Garden

The Library of Congress

Arlington

Tired kids

The President's motorcade