Washington DC - Day 1

I want to post about our visit to DC..even though it had nothing to do with running.
Well I did see a ton of runners...every day, everywhere...I was so jealous of all of them.
For every runner I saw I did see one smoker....that is so sad... Lots of smokers.  I think it's because it is a busy city and here I don't see as many people but still.

I loved DC.
I knew I would like to visit this place but I did not think I would love it this much.
I am so impressed with everything we saw.

We did not rent a car for this trip.  We used the subway and we walked, a lot of miles.
We were lucky to stay in a hotel that was "central", we were about 0.5 miles from the White House and maybe 1 miles from the Mall.

We arrived Saturday around dinner time so no visiting that day except for a trip to Whole Foods to fill up the pantry and refrigerator we had in our room.  The hotel we stayed at had full breakfast every morning and dinners 3 nights that we were there and that was included in the price for the room.

Sunday we headed out and first stop was the White House.

 

Mister President was not coming out to say Hi so we continued our visit.

 

We went to the Mall.  We took the advice of the lady at the front desk of the hotel and took the subway...turns out we could have walked.

 

We got out of the subway station and on our left was George who is getting a tune up because of damages caused by an earthquake.

 

 
And on the other side : The Capitol!

 

We thought we would see 2 of the Smithsonian museums and then walk the Mall and see the War monuments and visit Jonathan's absolute favorite: Lincoln.

Silly us.

We had no idea how big those museums are.

We started with the National Museum of American History .

Wow.

First of all it is free.

It is fantastic.  So much to see.  We could have spent a whole day in there.  We saw many interesting things that could not be photographed like Lincoln's hat and the flag that inspired the Star Spangled Banner for example.

 

These are Dorothy's famous ruby red shoes

 

This is a piece of the World Trade Center

 

We spent a few hours in the Museum and we headed out to walk to the Lincoln Memorial.

It looked a lot closer than it really was!

Good thing the weather was perfect that day, nice and COOL.

 

We wanted to see all the war memorials because we knew that it would be super busy on Memorial Day.

 

We saw many war veterans and their families. 

 

World War II Memorial: Pictures don't do it justice.  It is really beautiful. There were many bouquet of red flowers that people brought to honor their loved ones and I found this flag on the Wisconsin pillar.

 

 

 

Vietnam War Memorial: Much more somber.  The wall has 58,272 names, including 8 women.

 

 

 

 

 Korean War Memorial Very impressive...with it's huge statues of soldiers...

 

 

Last for this post..because I know it is getting long...

 

Lincoln Memorial:

 

Jonathan could not wait to get there.

He is obsessed with Lincoln.

My parents gave him $50 for his fantastic report card and all the academic awards he won and he spent only $10 and what did he get...a book about Abraham Lincoln!

That made me happy!

 
View from the top of the steps:

 

 This is engraved where Dr King stood when he made his famous speech:

 

 

So this was just day 1.

So much history and so much things to learn.

I loved that my kids were interested in everything they saw.

 

Thank you for reading..

 

On the running or I should say no running front:

Saw PT yesterday, asked if OK to walk a 5K with my kids today.

Answer I got: NO.

Follwed by: BE GOOD. (like she knew no was not enough or something....)

I came home with the intention of doing it anyway.

I ended up deciding to wait for the 4th of July.

Being good sucks....but it will pay off I know it.

 

Have a good weekend!

Run a mile for me!

Cheers!