On Friday July 25, I continued the world's fastest sightseeing blitz of D.C., starting at 6:30 a.m. as I took the train back to the National Mall. A quick note about D.C. residents - every last one of them loves reading the newspaper or a political novel during their commute on the train. In L.A., everyone on the train simply zones out or listens to music. Not so in the nation's capital. It's been 2 days and I'm already spotting cultural differences! Neat!
After a 2 hour wait to snag tickets for ascending the Washington Monument later, it was off to see over a hundred years of aviation history at the country's most frequently visited museum - the National Air and Space Museum! But first, there was still time to snag some morning shots of the Washington Monument. Priorities, people.
Good stuff.
The Air and Space Museum, of course, was amazing, although it did sort of feel like every last one of its 8 million annual visitors were there on that particular day. My demanding schedule limited me to spending just a few hours there but I still saw all the highlights and more.
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| The Spirit of St. Louis, SpaceShipOne, and Chuck Yeager's X-1 all in one room! |
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| Gemini, Apollo 11, and Mercury capsules |
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| The Hubble Space Telescope is huge! Old man for scale |
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| The original Wright flyer. The canvas has been replaced though. |
Then I made use of D.C.'s brilliant bike sharing program to bike to the Supreme Court. There I was able to actually enter the main courtroom and listen to a docent talk about the Court and its processes for admitting cases to its docket, most of which I remembered from my USC Constitutional Law class.
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| Designed by Cass Gilbert and based on a Greco-Roman temple, the Supreme Court building opened in 1935. The statue on the left is Contemplation of Justice and on the right is Authority of Law, both by James Earle Fraser. |
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| Great Hall outside the courtroom |
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| No pictures were allowed inside the courtroom, but just outside was ok. The judges flank the Chief Justice, who sits in the middle chair, and are arranged by seniority |
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| One of two self-supporting spiral staircases in the building |
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| Shortly before getting yelled at by Capitol Police for traipsing too close to the precious top of the stairs (the public entrance is to the side of the building) |
With no time to lose, I had to head straightaway to Ford's Theater. Wait, actually there's always some time for a few more pictures - this time of the Capitol.
But once at Ford's Theater I viewed artifacts related to President Lincoln's 1865 assassination, including letters written by Lincoln himself, the actual gun that killed the President, and the actual theater itself where the entire sordid deed took place.
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| The box where Lincoln sat and from which John Wilkes Booth jumped onto the stage |
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The next few hours were dedicated to meeting up with a USC friend in D.C. and also for, most importantly, dinner. I ate with Ranjani and a college friend of hers. Then it was time for Ranjani and I to meet up with her roommate to make use of my hard-earned Washington Monument tickets.
Man, was that 2 hour wait worth it. The view from the inside of the monument is awesome! At 555 feet and 5 inches, it's the world's tallest stone structure. It took almost 40 years to build and was finally finished in 1888 (elevator and all). I expertly planned it so that we would be up at the top right around sunset, and the results are pretty fantastic.
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| President's Park and the White House are on the right |
Sweet!
The rest of the night was dedicated to exploring all of the National Mall's many memorials, since this was the only time I had for doing so. But visiting the memorials at night turned out to be a great idea. Except for maybe the Vietnam War Memorial, which was a little too dark to see properly, they are all well-lit in theatrical ways that really amplify your experience (and your pictures).
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| Jefferson Memorial |
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| Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial |
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| Our monument-exploring crew |
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| MLK memorial |
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| Korean War Memorial |
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| Lincoln Memorial |
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| My awesome host! |
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| World War II Memorial |
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| Back to the start - Washington Monument |
By the time we returned home 4 hours later, we had successfully covered every major monument on the National Mall! I was out in the city from 7 am until 12:30 am the next day - what a blast! I would hit the rest of the city's main attractions that weekend.
That's it for Day 2! My next post will hopefully be able to wrap up my time in D.C. so I can finally start covering what I've been up to here in Germany. Bis dann!