DC - Vacation Day 2 - Wednesday!

Day 2 of our DC vacation started with a walk to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.  Growing up by an airport and being married to a man who served 22 years in the Air Force (I was married to him all but 2 of those years and were dating then) you can imagine this was a museum that was of great interest to us.  I've included some photos of some of my favorite exhibits but this is just a very small sampling of them.  There were guides throughout the facility giving tours and it was wonderful to hear bits and pieces of those tours as we roamed about.  Bill, of course, knew more about the military and commercial flying end of the business and I seemed to know quite a bit about the era encompassing WWII and Amelia Earheart.  We have read many books in book club on the WWII subject and found the WWII exhibits in all the museums quite interesting.  The space exhibits we found so very interesting as well.

We didn't stop with just the exhibits as we decided to take in one of the Imax movies The Dream is Alive which was all about the Space Shuttle.  It was pretty interesting and we all enjoyed having a few minutes to rest our feet.

Next we took a quick walk up to the U.S. Capitol.  Did not linger there as we were scheduled for a tour the next day through our Senator's office.  I'll share more on that next post.  We did take a quick stroll through the Smithsonian outdoor sculpture garden on our way by.  I knew my friend, Rene', would love this particular piece of sculpture so I took this picture for her.

From there Bill decided (yes I let him set the schedule) we would walk down to the WWII Memorial.  It was a beautiful memorial.  One of the things I enjoyed was reading the different quotes etched into the stone.

After that we continued with a stroll along the reflecting pool to the Korean War Memorial.  It is amazing to me how respectful most people are at these memorials.  A solemness among those walking through them.  I will share more on this memorial when I get to Day 7 as we revisited a few sites and took advantage of the Park Rangers tours of the memorials.

At this point we walked on over to the Lincoln Memorial.  I have to tell you this is the one memorial I had eagerly been awaiting to see.  I was a little bit overwhelmed when I finally saw this memorial in person.  I have a special fondness for President Lincoln.  When in elementary school, he was the President I was assigned to write my school reports.  I even had to learn his Four Score speech and recite it for another project at school.  I was assigned Mary Todd Lincoln as my First Lady assignment.  As it happens, I also attended Abraham Lincoln H.S.  I've learned so much about this President's life that I can honestly say without a doubt this was the highlight of the trip for me.  Don't get me wrong I saw so many amazing things there but this one has been a dream of mine to see for YEARS!  And yes that picture on the right is looking up at the roof between the 2 rows of columns.  Funny story about photo taking on Day 7 to come.

From there we walked over to the Vietnam Memorial.  It was one of those memorials that just makes you want to cry.  It was difficult getting a good picture as the granite of this amazing memorial is so polished it reflects everything right back at you.  Including yourself taking a photo.   This was a memorial we revisited on Day 7 and enjoyed the Park Ranger tour.  These little tours are only about 20 minutes long but you get some pretty interesting information - so worth the 20 minutes.  

 This was the day of walking that was too much for Bill's back.  Once we reached our hotel it was decided that room service was the appropriate thing for supper instead of walking somewhere.  Such a fancy spread for pizza and chicken fingers! 

That ends day 2 and looking forward to sharing day 3 soon.  In case you wonder how I remember to keep everything straight - I actually took a small notebook and kept a journal on our trip so at the end of the day I would write down things from our day that I wanted to remember.  I highly recommend if you are packing tons of stuff into your days like we were.