My apologies for not posting for several days. We got home late last night. The three days before that we were in DC which meant that I was exhausted from being a tourist for hours on end and didn't feel like re-living it on this blog.
Anyway, we started out by going to Arlington cemetery. That was of course depressing and I teared up several times. We watched the changing of the guards at the tomb of the unknowns. It is guarded 24/7 by soldiers. They change duty every hour. About 15 minutes before the hour people start to gather around to watch and its supposed to be silent out of respect. The best part was that the soldier actually stopped marching twice… once to yell at a girl to get back behind the bar and again to tell a group of teenagers that their silence was requested. It as all very impressive. The only part that sucked was that Arlington house, the home of Robert E. Lee was empty of all the contents in order for restoration. So there wasn’t much to see there. When we got into DC we went to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. It’s the one with all the dinosaurs and animals (stuffed of course.) My favorite part was the collection of gems. I saw the hope diamond which was of course quite exciting. It was overall just a very cool museum. We were both quite disappointed that the museum of American History is closed until mid 2008 for renovations. So from the museum of natural History we went to the national archives and saw the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the Constitution. We then headed to our hotel and relaxed after walking all day. On DC day 2 we started out at the Lincoln Memorial, then headed to the Vietnam memorial, WWII memorial and Washington Monument. The Lincoln memorial is very impressive. Its just huge and then standing in front of it and looking at the Washington Monument is pretty breathtaking. Vietnam memorial made me cry. Probably because I got some picture of names for my dad, but also because its surreal to look at all those names and think of the humans that died in one war. Things didn’t get any more uplifting because then we went to the Holocaust Museum. That was quite the downer as well. From there we visited the Air and Space Museum. We didn’t’ spend a whole lot of time there; we mostly went because they were housing parts of the American History Museum. Among other things, we saw Abe’s top hat, Dorothy’s slippers, Kermit the Frog, and Carey Bradshaw’s computer from Sex and the City. After resting at the hotel for a bit we walked over to the white house and got the required picture of us in front of it. That brings us to DC day 3. the first thing we did was visit the International Spy Museum which is pretty much my favorite part of DC. I'm fairly paranoid now about how many spies are out there. DC supposedly has more spies than any other US city.... I'm guessing Bothell doesn't have many but I'll be watching. Now every time we go somewhere I ask Geoff to pick out which people are spies. He's getting a little sick of the game; i don't think he's as paranoid as I am.
After the spy museum we went across the street to visit the Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery. By this point we were getting pretty sick of museums and we kinda drug ourselves through. Geoff in particular was less than thrilled about looking at art, but my favorite part were the portraits from the last 30 years or so. There was some awesome photography in particular.
After those two museums we had lunch and took a nap to prepare for our "monuments by moonlight" trolley tour. It left from Union Station so we headed there early to wonder through the shops and get a snack. The tour ended up being a lot of fun. It was really cool to see the monuments all lit up in the dark. We saw a lot of the town and got off at the FDR memorial, the Lincoln Memorial (from there visited the Vietnam memorial again and the Korean war memorial) and the Marine Corp Memorial.
So now we are home and it feels damn good. We had an amazing time but it was so nice to sleep in my own bed with my fat cat curled up next to me. She was fat before but she really plumped up while we were gone. I told Geoff several times that when I leave town she gets fatter (depression of course) and he didn't believe me. Then after we had been home for about an hour he looked at her and said "my god, she's got a neck roll, she did get fatter!" I tried playing with her tonight to burn some calories but she doesn't move very fast; I've taken to calling her Tubby or Tub Tub. Anyway, today has been an endless cycle of laundry and tomorrow its back to work. Then I work the next 6/7 days, all 12 hour shifts. That should get me back into the swing of things!
P.S. Blogspot isn't letting me upload more pictures right now, so i'll post more later. Here's the Lincoln Memorial at night and the Vietnam Memorial during the day.
