Day 11: Washington D.C.

I love Washington D.C.

The day started out at Arlington Cemetery. Did you know Arlington Cemetery was once the property of Robert E. Lee's family? The Lee mansion is still on the property. It was conceived as a punishment for Robert E. Lee for not commanding the Union Army, and, instead, commanding the Confederate Army during the Civil War.

We got on a tram at the visitors' center, and it stopped at the first site, which was the graves of John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Ted Kennedy. It was stopping at the last grave that prevented us from catching our tram to the next location, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. I convinced my mom that it would be quicker for us to walk to it than to wait for the tram (which it was).

We got there just in time to watch the changing of the guard, which happens every half hour in the summertime. Here is a picture of the monument. Apparently, I did not get any pictures of the changing of the guard. I did get video, at the insistence of my mom. I'm pretty sure no one is going to want to watch it.

We narrowly missed another tram, which, as it turns out, was headed to Robert E. Lee's house. We did not make it there on foot. Instead, we saw these:

After that, we drove around and saw the White House:

The Capitol Building:

And Ford's Theater.

Then we got back on the bus and went back to our hotel room in Alexandria. We decided to venture into Old Town for lunch, after hopping a shuttle and the Metro. We were pretty proud of ourselves when we stepped off the Metro at King Street.

After lunch, we took a cab back to our hotel, where I narrowly avoided what is hopefully the last crisis of my academic career. However, once it was resolved, I didn't think too much about it, since we still had a lot of our day left.

We had a large break during the day, so we also had dinner at the worst Chinese buffet on the planet.

There were several handwritten signs posted behind the counter in both English and Spanish which conveyed the following guidelines:

• No checks or American Express cards.


• Do not even THINK about wasting food because you will be charged for it.


• Do NOT sit in the dining room if you are not eating dinner.

I took small portions of everything, which was smart because everything was bad. Even the desserts were bad. Maybe they wouldn't have these problems with people wasting food or not eating dinner if the food were better.

In the evening, we went back to look at the various monuments around the Mall.

Here are some of the ones we saw that I had never seen before:

Jefferson

The Korean War

This picture doesn't show it, but it's pretty eerie at night.

Franklin Roosevelt

Does anyone know the name of FDR's beloved pet dog? It was a question we were given before we got off the bus.

It was night, and it began to get dark, so we didn't notice the ominous clouds gathering overhead until we were headed back to the bus to make our way over to the World War II monument.

When we got to the place where we were supposed to meet the bus, it began dumping rain on us. We stood under the overhang of one of those information booths for about ten minutes before the bus showed up. They had just gotten a ticket somewhere along the way.

All in all, it was quite a day. I saw more of Washington D.C. in one day than I have in all my other trips combined.