We got up really early on Friday morning and arrived in Washington around 9:30am. We left the car at the hotel (Best Western Key Bridge in Arlington, VA) and took the Metro into downtown Washington. All the research we did said that driving and parking in downtown Washington is a nightmare. We got off at the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum and picked up the Old Town Trolley tour. What is nice about these tours is that they give you a great overview of the city that you are visiting and since they do the tour as a loop, they allow boarding/reboarding at any of their stops.
Our first stop is the Lincoln Memorial, Vietnam Veterans Memorial and Korean War Veterans Memorial. This stop allows us to see 3 memorials at one place. We started at the Lincoln Memorial and took alot of pictures. We actually ended up spending over an hour just at this memorial. From there, it was a quick walk over to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. It is quite a site to see all of the names inscribed on the wall. There are books at the entrance to the memorial where you can look up a name and it will tell you where on the wall it is. We then walked over to the Korean War Veterans Memorial. Another moving memorial.
We got back on the trolley and made our way over to our next stop, The White House. We got a few pictures and picked up some souvenirs from the gift shop. We grabbed some lunch and then walked over to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. We didn’t have alot of time in the museum but we were able to see Archie Bunker’s chair and Fonzie’s leather jacket. From the museum, we boarded the trolley again and our next stop was the US Capitol. We took many pictures there and then walked over to the Smithsonian’s National Air & Space Museum. This would be our last stop for the day. We wanted to see the show in the planetarium but we were 2 minutes late. We didn’t really get a chance to check out the museum since it was closing shortly after we got there.
We catched the subway and made our way back to the hotel. After a quick power nap, we made our way to the restaurant to meet up with Karen’s brother Ross, his wife Susie, their daughter Liz and Liz‘s roommate and teammate Cutrina. Ross had suggested that we go to a BBQ place that they had been to before. We said hell yeah, it’s BBQ. The place is called Old Glory Bar-B-Que and it was awesome. The ribs were to die for and I had all of the sweet tea I could drink.
After dinner, Karen and I decided that we would try to photograph some of the memorials at night. The only problem was that finding a parking spot near any memorial is next to impossible. We were able to finally find a spot close to the National World War II Memorial after driving around for almost an hour. Once again, this was another moving memorial. We got back to the hotel around 11:30pm and decided to call it a night.
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