I stayed in Manassas, which is in Virginia, about 30-45 minutes away from Washington DC. The first night I was there, Don and I ventured into DC without any real plans. Driving in, the first thing that I saw that alerted me that DC was close was the Washington Monument. I was so excited, I started snaping pictures from the freeway!
We found some street parking and ran into a coffee shop to get some change to feed the meter. Then we headed into this huge building that the Eastern Market was in. Don heard about the Eastern Market, and it sounded like a cool farmers market type of deal, so we decided to check it out.
Inside wasn't quite what we expected. It had some set markets, but we found out later that it's real busy during the weekend, not the weekdays. But we walked around and saw that they were selling lots of stuff, from meats, to cheese, to seafood, to sweets and flowers!
We got a few sweets and decided to wander around a bit outside. The buildings were old and looked like one big building. But there were actually painted different colors in different sections.
After walking around a bit, we started getting hungry, so we decided to check out Tunnicliff's Tavern we had walked by earlier. We ended up having some very yummy pizza and wings there.
We decided that we could not leave without seeing some of the monuments and memorials that DC is famous for, so we set the Garmin to find the Jefferson Memorial and headed in that direction. I had found some random website earlier that day that described a walking tour around the tidal basin where you would hit all the main memorials along the way, so we decided to try it out. Driving down, we passed the National Capitol.
We found a free parking lot near the tidal basin and walked along the road till we got there. It was a great view of the Jefferson Memorial and the Washington Monument.
Jefferson Memorial up close
We walked along the basin, and came up to the FDR memorial. As we walked along, we realised that we were going "backwards" through the memorial (and backwards through our walking tour).
They had his quotes throughout the memorial area.
The waterfalls (if we had gone through the memorial area the correct way,) started with a small one then got biggger and bigger. We started at the end of his term, so the first one we saw was this big one. Apparently, way back when the memorial first opened up, people would come in their swim suits and splash around in here. We aren't allowed to do that anymore. Although it was plenty hot!!
FDR's dog, Fala went everywhere that he did.
This area was a tribute to the depression times during FDR's presidency.
When we finally rounded one side of the tidal basin, we walked towards the memorial bridge, hoping to see the Lincoln Monument. We caught a beautiful sunset. Keep in mind, the sun sets at 8:30 pm during the summer!
Then we saw it! The Lincoln Memorial! We ended walking all around the memorial, while I kept reading the different states carved on the top. I keep looking and looking for Hawaii. I saw California like 3 times at least.
We got to the front, and I could not believe that we were standing at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial!! Here, where so much history had gone on, where Martin Luther King did his "I have a dream" speach ... I was finally at the Lincoln Memorial!
But I was still puzzled at why I wasn't able to find Hawaii anywhere on the memorial. I walked around the whole dang thing too! Then Don pointed out a sign on the ground.
Apparently we didn't make the cut. Great. Well, the memorial is stupid anyways. They can't even spell. Apparently, there's a typo in one of Lincoln's speaches they have displayed in the memorial, but it would have been too expensive to redo, so they tried to cover it up. My friend (Betty) told me about it after I got back. So I didn't realise it and don't have a closeup picture of the typo. But the next time I go to DC, I definately will get it to show you! Here's a picture of Lincoln inside the memorial. It was pretty hot inside there. For some reason, I thought the statue would be bigger than it actually was. And I guess because I had watched "A Night at the Museum" recently, I kept expecting him to come alive and start talking to me! Hahahaha.
Our next stop was the Korean War Memorial. It had soliders almost 7 feet tall trudging through the memorial. It was starting to be dusk, and it was a little eerie to see the soilders. They were a greyish white color, so they seemed to glow unnaturally, like ghosts. You approach the memorial from the back, and it's almost like you've stumbled upon soilders trudging through the rice paddy fields. You can see their expressions and details of their clothing so well ... out of all the memorials I saw, this one was the most eerie and touching memorial along the mall.
When you get to the front of the memorial and look back, you can see all the soilders walking towards you but looking around for enemies.
They had a wall that was etched with pictures of people and things from the war
Along the way, they had numbers listed of all the casualties and missing people from each country.
The wreath caught my eye, then the wall did too ...
We doubled back towards the Reflecting pool, and started walking towards the WWII memorial. Somehow we had gotton on an access path, which wasn't lighted like the path along the reflecting pool. It was kind of dark, but there was a little light so we could make our way along the path. It was around 10pm, and it was still sooo hot! We finally made it to the WWII memorial, and it was all lit up. It was so pretty and not many people were hanging around there. We got some pretty good shots from there.
I wanted to take a picture of the Hawaii wall, but I went left from the Pacific tower, and Hawaii was actually to the right of the tower, so I ended up walking around the whole WWII memorial. It was actually a pretty neat place to be. If you look down one way, you can see the Lincoln Memorial in the distance all lit up.
And you turn around, and the Washington Monument all lit up is right on the other side of the street.
It was a really neat place to be, and I would suggest that if you are going to see it, this is definately one of the memorials that is better at night! I went back a few days later during the day, and the impact was just not the same.
At this point, we were both really tired and hot and wanted to get back home. However, the car was parkee pretty far away from where we were, and we would have to walk past the Jefferson Monument to get back there, so we decided to head towards the Jefferson Monument and check it out. Now walking along the Tidal Basin earlier, there was no railings along the walkway that just dropped down to the tidal basin, which at low tide, was pretty far drop. Plus, with all the low drooping trees and spiderwebs along the way, I wasn't too thrilled about walking along the other side of the basin at night - especially since it was dark and there were no lights along the way. So when I saw the other side had a huge parking lot (which I wished we parked in), I opted to walk in the parking lot area instead, deeming it was definately safer! You couldn't see the basin or anything because of the trees in the way, but no biggie, since it was dark anyways.
All the reivews that I read about the Jefferson Monument kept saying that you HAD to see this memorial at night. Well, when we got there, I don't understand what the difference is to see it during the day or night. Once you're inside, it's pretty much the same. Plus, I would think during the day you would get a better view of the mall. At night, you can only see lights, and they aren't that much. I don't know if it was because I was tired or what, but I wasn't really impressed with the monument. Yes, it was cool looking. but it wasn't as impressive as all the stuff I read about it made it out to seem.
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