DC Part 2

Today was a busy day in Washington.  We woke up at 3:00 and flew from Boston to DC and got here around 7:30.  Now that the government is back open, we hit the ground running.  We didn’t even stop at our hotel, we went straight to the capital.  We had a tour scheduled for 9:20 this morning, but we weren’t sure it was even going to go since the government has only been open for a day. 

Due to traffic and trouble parking, we were 30 minutes late for the tour, but the good news is the other 13 people who were going to be on the tour didn’t show up, so it was just me, Eric, and our tour guide from Weber State.  The capital tour was awesome.  We started out in a room full of statues, the largest of which is a replica of the statue on top of the Capital.  It’s huge!  While we were talking about the statue, our guide told us that the original model of the statue was supposed to have a liberty cap, but since there were slaves working in the capital, they chose to go with a different headpiece since some of the workers were not free.  That was kind of interesting – I didn’t know slaves helped build the capital, but it makes a lot of sense.

The capital is incredibly ornate with gorgeous columns, paintings, and architecture. There is one hallway that the walls are all very ornately painted.  It almost reminded me of pictures I’ve seen of Versailles.  

In the rotunda, there is a statue of Ronald Reagan, which as a die-hard republican I had to get a picture with.  The base of his statue has actual pieces from the Berlin Wall.

Each state gets two statues in the Capital and Utah has Philo T. Farnsworth and Brigham Young – that’s kind of fun.  The room with Brigham Young has whisper spots where if you stand on one side of the room and whisper then the sound is magnified and sounds like it is coming out of a microphone on the other side of the room.  John Quincy Adams sat in the spot where things were magnified so he could eavesdrop on his fellow Congressmen.  

Overall, we had a great time wandering through the capital.  That was the best part of the day.

 After the tour, we grabbed a quick bite to eat and walked down the entire mall.  Our first stop was the National Archives to see the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights.  When Eric came to DC as a teenager, he waited hours in line to see these documents, so they have a special place in his heart.  It was pretty cool but quite boring for me.  This was a lesson in compromise since I was bored and could finally appreciate how Eric feels when I drag him to art museums, which bore him to tears. Marriage is always a rodeo.

 Our next stops were to see the monuments on the National Mall.  The Washington Monument is still closed (it was closed when I was there 5 years ago too), so we weren’t able to do too much there.  

Our next stop was the World War II Memorial.  This is my absolutely favorite memorial on the Mall.  My Grandpa fought in the Pacific in WWII, so it’s very special for me.  They truly were heroes - I just wish I could have called my Grandpa today. If only there were phones in heaven.

Our next stop was the Vietnam Memorial.  This monument is so fascinating to me because there are SO MANY NAMES.  It's crazy to think how many people fought and died in this war.  I read a poem in high school about a Vietnam Veteran that visits this memorial and he's so conflicted because he can see his reflection on the wall and feels like he should be on the wall as well.  I don't know why that poem stuck with me, but I pulled it up on my phone and read it while we were at the memorial.  

Our next stop was my second favorite memorial which is the Lincoln Memorial.  Lincoln was such an inspirational man and president.  He deserves every good thing ever said about him.  

Sticking with tradition, we read the Gettysburg Address on the wall of the memorial.

Our next stop was the Korea War Memorial, and then onto the Martin Luther King memorial.  This one was VERY interesting.  It's the newest monument on the Mall so neither of us had ever seen it before.  It's built so there it's a mountain with the center cut out and MLK out in front coming out of the mountain.  Surrounding the monument there are a lot of MLK quotes that were fun to read.  I learned a lot about MLK while visiting the memorial.

The next stop was the Franklin D Roosevelt Memorial.  I had never been to this one and I absolutely loved it.  It's sectioned off by his different terms for the presidency and has a lot of inspiring quotes about what he was dealing with at that particular time in his presidency.  His quotes from the depression were really interesting - he really wanted to enable people to work and create jobs to get them back on the market.  My favorite quote was dealing with the dictators in Europe during WWII who was promising a new order.  FDR said that their method of government was "not new and it is not order."  I loved that. There was also a statue of Eleanor Roosevelt who was the first delegate of the United States to go to the United Nations.

After this, we were getting really tired and we had walked a LONG way throughout the day.  We crossed the mall and headed over to the White House.  There's not a lot to do there so we just stopped for a minute, took a quick picture, and then headed on our way.

We decided to call it an early day (although since everything in DC closes at 5:00, it really wasn't early), grab some dinner and then head back to the hotel.