Another beautiful day in Maryland. Although its cold and crisp the sun is shinning! The weather was so nice that we decided to go down to Washington DC and do some sight seeing. We arrived at 12:00pm, we had some well deserved Starbucks to start before heading to our very long walk. Our first stop was the National Archives were you can see the original documents of the Declaration of Independence, The Bill of Rights, The Constitution, The Amendment to abolish slavery and all the letters and other info from all the other documents. All this is located at the main chamber called Rotunda -Charters of Freedom, its a big room with very little light so the old documents don’t get damaged (you can take pictures but no flash). The documents are all on display in a round fashion, hence the name Rotunda. It was great to see, specially when you can see all the drafts of the Constitution before the final one was signed. I saw Benjamin’s Franklin’s signature he had a beautiful penmanship, it was really cool. We left after that because we still wanted to go see the Washington Monument, World War II memorial and the Lincoln Memorial.
We headed to the Washington Monument and on the way passed through a nice botanical sculpture garden and walked all the way to the monument. The thing is so big that you can see it from miles and you think,” Its right there after that street…” few blocks later and you’re still not there yet. We finally got there and the big spear (or big phallus) is very impressive, it is huge. You cant stop thinking if the person who thought of this had something to compensate (hahaha). After taking some more pictures we decided not to go up because we needed to get tickets half a mile away where we walked before, so we thought we just carry on to the World War II memorial. Oh by the way all the museums and monuments are all free, even going up to the Washington monument or entering the archives is free of charge, I thought this was the coolest!
The World War II memorial is relatively new it was opened in 2004. It’s name says it all , it honors all the people who served and died on the war. I was really impressed by the copper sculptures of different war images (sculptor Ray Kaskey). There were several with the women who were working in the factories during the war. I thought that was great to see. Also there was a quote about women and the war, I think it’s great that we are finally being recognised and printed in stone to show our contribution in history! The monument has several pillars in a oval circle which represent all the states in the US. A big fountain in the middle and two pavilions in opposites sides of each other, one saying Pacific and the other Atlantic. Its really beautifully made, and there are quotes and significant dates set in stones. But the best was yet to come and you could already see him sitting there, looking from a far; almost like he is watching your every move. Like Big Brother.
We walked through this beautiful passage way with trees set one after each other. The wild geese where having their feeding break before heading again south for the winter and they were everywhere, I think at least a hundred of them eating grass. But finally we arrived at the Lincoln Memorial. Its a big white building with pillars. Its beautiful, the marmor from the steps and pillars are stunning. When you get to the top there is a huge stone sculpture of Lincoln sitting on a chair. Just to think that at the bottom of the steps in August 28, 1963, under a nearly cloudless sky, more than 250,000 people, a fifth of them white, gathered to demonstrate for “jobs and freedom.” Martin Luther King gave his famous speech “I have a dream” that day. That place truly has so much history that you can almost feel it in the air.
After all this we cached a cab to go back to the parking garage so we could park the car on the street and go for dinner. By the time we got to the car it was 17:15pm, and we were really dead from all the walking, I think we walked 3 miles in total. So we parked and went to the brewery were they had very nice food and the place had great jazzy music. We ate and had some drinks and headed back home to Fredrick. I snoozed all the way home dreaming of the 1963 and how cool it would have been if I could have been there in the crowd, listening to the words of wisdom of Mr Luther! Well hope you all enjoy the slide show, all the pics are in the order of the post. If you have any questions or just something nice to say just leave a comment. Have a good one!
http://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/bin/slideshow.swf
Little Wooden Shoe 