More Washington DC

More Washington DC pictures. These are pictures of our Open Top Tour bus. As you can see from the pictures I took on our tour, many of them are from the top of the bus. This was a great way to see everything, take some good pictures, and get a suntan all at the same time.

One of the most interesting historical places to visit in DC is Ford's Theater, where Abraham Lincoln was shot while watching a play. This theater still shows plays several nights a week, in fact, when I was here TDY for 2 months in 2003 just before we retired from the Air Force Reserve, I went to a play here at Ford's Theater.

The first pictures are of Ford's Theater, and the other pictures are of the Peterson House, the hotel right across the street, where President Lincoln was taken after he was shot, and where he died 9 hours later.

Next is the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, where our paper money is printed. We were able to take the tour of this place and watch as they were making money. We saw many large pallets of paper money all in high stacks. Very interesting to see where and how our money is made. The second picture is the National Headquarters for The American Red Cross.

We visited the Korean War Memorial, and this was beautiful, these are some pictures we took.

These are some of the other buildings in Washington DC, and some of the statues also, there were so many and all looked so impressive and important. We had no idea what most of them were, but they were nice. I think it would take years to learn all there is to know about this fascinating place.

As you can tell, we both were very happy to spend time in Washington DC, we both loved it there, spent 5 very full days, and could have spent even more time there. Now we are heading for Pennsylvania to visit a friend of Joe's and check out the area.

Washington DC

We spend a lot of time touring Washington DC. These are some of the places we went. You have to have reservations to tour the White House (6 months out), The Pentagon (3 months out), or to view the Senate or the House in session (2 or 3 months out), so of course we did not know anything about this rule, so we only could see some off these places.

Of course the White House was the most important place see, and we were only able to visit the White House Visitors Center across the street. This fence in front of the lawn is as close as you can get to the White House, and we looked around but there were no Obama family members in sight when we were there.



We parked at a Metro Station close to where we were staying, and took the Metro everywhere we went while we were visiting Washington DC. There are so many people and so many cars, that is the Metro is the only reasonable way to get around town for tourists. When we arrived in the DC area, we went to the metro stop at the Union Station. This is where all Amtrak trains come into DC and it is a very big Metro stop as well, due to the location. The Union Station is beautiful, and a very busy place, almost like a small town with many restaurants and a shopping mall and everything. These pictures were taken there during our several trips into DC.

Our US Capitol was one of the places we wanted to spend some time, and even though we could not go into the chambers where the Senate and the House were in session, we were able to take a tour of the Capitol Building. This is a beautiful building inside and out, there were so many people there on tours.




We went to the Lincoln Memorial, what a moving and inspiring place this is, very emotional and very beautiful.

We saw the Washington Monument also, they have tours to the top of the monument each day, and you must arrive there first thing in the morning to get tickets, so we did not go up to the top, we were told that the view from the top is spectacular.

These pictures are of the Jefferson Memorial and the The Washington National Cathedral

I will post another blog tomorrow and add more pictures of places in DC and also the great open top tour bus we went on. We had a great time here in Washington DC.

Arlington National Cemetery

We spent one day driving around the DC area and seeing some of the sites. It is hard to drive here, especially when you do not know your way around, and hard to find parking, so we decided that we would park the car at the Metro station near the base and ride the Metro like most of the people who work here.

So the next day we were off and running, trying to see as much as we could. We took the Metro to Arlington National Cemetery, we purchased a 2 day pass on a tour tram, it takes you everywhere, and you can get off and visit, then catch the next one and continue your trip. Great way to see all of the interesting places, this is a narrated tour and trams come by every 20 minutes.

We spent some time at Arlington, and saw John F Kennedy's grave site with the eternal flame. Of course, Jackie and the two babies they lost are also buried here. Nearby is Robert Kennedy's grave site, with just a simple white cross marker.

We watched the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. They change every 30 minutes in the Summer and every hour in the winter. They stand guard at the tomb 24 hours a day and every day of the year, regardless of the weather.

We spent several hours here at Arlington, then we rode the tram around DC to see all of the stops, to decide where we wanted to go the next day. We made our plan for the next day but knew we would need more days to see all we want of the DC area.