We had left on a Wednesday night, a few hours after I got off of work (there's always last-minute things to do, it seems... although, for us it turns into last-hour things!) and drove a couple hours before using my phone to get a hotel via hotwire.com. Thursday morning we woke up, had room service for breakfast (it was surprisingly well priced at our hotel) and then got on the road.
We picked a hotel that was in Rockville, MD that was so close to the Twinbrook metro step, that it was literally just walking out the back door of the hotel and across the street. Fantastic!
After we managed to navigate the Metro quite successfully (thanks in part to my Washington, DC Moleskine), we ended up at the stop closest to one of the big Tourist Areas: the walk from the Washington Monument to Lincoln Memorial. I knew we weren't going to have enough time to do any of the museums justice, so even though I was dying to go in them, we felt this walk was the best use of our limited time (and provided a good amount of photo ops for me).
Above was our first glimpse of the monument, taken from across the street.
Above is, oddly, one of my favorite photos from the day - the Monument is just to the right of the photo (as I'm sure you can tell by the circle of flags), but I enjoy the large group of people walking to/from the monument on the slight incline.
we had stopped to turn on the GPS on my phone so that we could track exactly where we were going, and John was fiddling with it when I turned around and saw this small family, above, looking up at the monument. I was lucky enough to get the camera out and get a photo just before they turned around to walk away.
Above is pretty much the exact opposite side of the monument as the first photo, and features the tree you see on the left of the photo of the people on the hill.
I hadn't done a lot of research on what exactly was in the area we were going to. I basically just knew I wanted to see the Lincoln Memorial (and one day I hope to go at night, but it wasn't to happen on this trip), and we figured we'd walk along the reflecting pool. Anyway, I had no idea there was a fountain at the end of the reflecting pool (the side closest to the Washington Monument) with columns around it with each State name on it. I didn't want to bore John too much with my photo taking, but wanted a photo of at least one column, so I decided I'd take a photo of whichever one I saw first: Ohio, Michigan or Connecticut (for obvious reasons). I found Ohio first.
This beautiful photo above is completely unedited if that tells you something about how awesome this pathway was. This runs next to the reflecting pool, and is this breathtaking the whole way down. It was incredible walking down this path as people played frisbee and team sports on the fields to the left of us and the reflecting pool sparkled to the right. Ok, well, it didn't actually sparkle. it was pretty greenish-brown that day. I was also surprised how many people went running along this path. I've recently taken up running myself, and enjoy doing it outside, but there were SO MANY tourists walking around, and while I don't mind other runners seeing me run, I'm not sure I could handle sweating and panting my way past hoards of tourists. Meh, to each their own.
I'm pretty sure everyone who has ever visited the Lincoln Memorial has taken this photo. Mine came out ok. It was tough dealing with the really gross water that day.
A similar photo from the Memorial itself - I did take photos of the building and the statue of Lincoln inside, but didn't bother posting them because really, we all know what it looks like at this point.
I wanted to get a photo that showed tourists at the Lincoln Memorial without being a typical crowd shot. I was surprised at the number of people just sitting on the steps (which was also annoying, btw, because some of us actually wanted to walk up and down the steps), but there were a few people sitting on the top ledge, overlooking the reflecting pool. Above is one of those people.
On a side note, after doing all that walking, if you want to sit and relax at the Lincoln Memorial, there was NO ONE sitting on the sides of the structure. John and I settled down there for a few minutes and it was pretty amazing how it went from Tourist Central to Calm Spot...
...and above was our view from our relaxing location!
Above is another view from our relaxing location - looking directly up one of the columns of the Memorial.
After we finished our short Touristy Trip, we called up John's friend who lives in DC. He was meeting some friends at a local bar/restaurant to watch the Penguins game, so we got back on the Metro to go there, eat some food, have a couple drinks and then eventually make our way back to our hotel and crash for the night. We really had planned on living it up a little more in DC, but we were both pretty tired.
And that was Day One - stay tuned for Day Two which consisted of a trip to Aunt Kitty & Uncle John's house where we really got a chance to just relax and enjoy the view. Oh, and play a mean game of Ping Pong, of course.
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