Day Two

Washington.  Slept pretty well, woke about 7am and started the day with a coffee (no milk :-( ) in our room.  Then we showered and headed out.  Walked down Pennsylvania Avenue towards the White House.  Watched a big motorcade of about a thousand cops escort someone important into the building next door to the White House, argued for a bit about whether it really WAS the White House or not (it was but the back side not the front, hence the reason it didn’t look familiar to me, and it's actually really small) , walked to the front side of the White House (which I DID recognise) and then wandered to the Washington Monument.  Very impressive, way taller than it seems in photos and on TV.  Carried on to the War memorial which was very impressive and then on to the Lincoln Memorial.  Quite an impressive building made of marble with an over-sized statue of Lincoln, also made of marble.  Have a quick bite of lunch, then went to the Vietnam Memorial.  Wow, the American sure know how to honour their fallen soldiers.  A very impressive memorial, the names of all 55,000 that were killed during the conflict carved in chronological order into the marble along a stretch of wall roughly 40 metres long.  One end of the wall points to the Lincoln Memorial, the other to the Jefferson monument.  There is a statue of three soldiers overlooking the wall, with white African American and Latino soldiers depicted.

Then it was on to the Korean war memorial, this was one of my favourites.  Oversized statues of men set amongst scrub, all wearing rain hoods and carrying their gear.  Next to the statues is a marble wall, and on it there are faces etched, so it appears that the faces are looking at the soldiers.  Very hard to photograph as the faces are best seen from a slight angle and the wall is shiny black marble and very reflective, but really impressive to see it in person.  We wandered home after this to drop off a heavy book (!) Joe had bought on the American Civil War, and for me to change my shoes – sore feet – sigh.  Headed off again to Arlington Cemetery, this time using the Metro system, which is pretty easy and efficient once you understand how to buy tickets.  Arlington is enormous, just acres and acres of land which must have thousands of servicemen buried here.  Visited John F Kennedy’s grave and the Tomb of the Unknown soldier.  Then we walked all the way back through the other side to the US Marine Corps Memorial, Iwo Jima.  This was really impressive and J was forgiven the long hike to get there, it’s a huge monument and well worth the visit.

The Cemetery closes at 5 so it was time to head home again, with tired feet and sunbaked necks & faces.  Was quite warm here today, 22 degrees and very sunny, we were expecting it to be a bit cooler.  Dinner at the local burger bar, update the blog on what we did today and pick some photos to post.