Day 3 - VA and DC with the Malloys

Today at 7:30AM sharp our personal tour guides arrived at our campground to shuttle us around DC. I became friends with Bob and Maribeth when they were working for IBM in the 1980's in Burlington, they left Vermont in the mid 80's and we have stayed friends all these years. They both took a day off work to spend with us, what great friends. Bob had our tour planned out for the day including lunch and dinner venues, he is a great tour guide. We started with Iwo Jima, always one of our stops in DC. It was cold but busy, this was our first indication that maybe there were a few more school age children than usual.

  

From Iwo Jima we intended to do the Arlington Cemetery next, however due to heavy traffic and rather cold temperatures, we decided that we would move on to the Air Force Memorial. This is one of the newer memorials and it is situated where you have a great view of the city, pictures do not really do not capture it well.

We next visited the Pentagon Memorial, this is in memory of the 159 people that lost their lives on 911. It is somber memorial, we took no pictures, the symbolism they built into the display is impressive and it really does make one appreciate the horror of that day.  

We took an early lunch at a small cafe in the city and got some time off our feet.

Next stop was the library of congress. This is one of Maribeth's favorite buildings in DC, she wants to spend her birthday there someday (pay attention Bob).

   

This building also houses most of what was Thomas Jefferson's personal library, an impressive collection to say the lest of books from philosophy to medicine. It does make one ponder if humans were actually smarter back then than today. We then took the tunnel that runs under the street to the capital building. Apparently you need to be signed up for a tour to get to see much and Bob had to bolt because it occurred to him that his parking meter was going to run out, so we did not tour the capital.

Our next stop was a the Catholic Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, something that would not normally be on our list to see, but should be. It is the largest church in north America and has unique chapels for about 65 different countries.

What I found most unique from other catholic churches is that it is still evolving. The Mosaic's are done by Americans (all but six) and really have a different style than those from hundreds of years ago. Our guide was unique to say the least, he was an elderly gentleman that clearly thought a lot of himself, but had a memory that was just amazing, he had more facts about each mosaic, shrine, chapel than you would think a human could retain….impressive.

From the Basilica we moved onto see Lincoln's cottage, another site that we would have probably missed had the Malloys not been our tour guides.

It is not a national monument so does not benefit from the tax payer funding like others, but none the less is a very interesting site to visit. Lincoln spent much of this time during the summers at this cottage to escape the heat of the city. He rode his horse three miles back and forth each day, think about that in today's world.

Next on the agenda was dinner, Bob had made us reservations at the Capital Grill in downtown DC. I learned from Bob that when in DC order a Manhattan at the Capital Grill, this may be my new drink, very good. To say everyone enjoyed their meal is an understatement, it gets five stars from all of us.

After dinner we planned to tour some of the memorials after dark, since we have always toured them during daylight in the past. This is when we really found out that the kids were out of school, holy cow there were bus loads and bus loads of kids everywhere. It was actually good to see so many young people taking in our countries history, for the most part they appeared genuinely in awe, as they should. 

The monuments at night take on a different look and feel, and we visited the Martin Luther King memorial for the first time, it is impressive and very well done.

By now we were all bushed, our guides chauffeured us back to our campsite and we turned in for the night...it was a really long but good day. Tomorrow we intend to tour some of the museums on our own.