I am sorry this is taking me so long to update but since Blogger changed their format I can't figure out the changes which just makes the whole process more difficult and longer so just been frustrated with it all and yeah I know ... getting further and further behind, so I figured I would try and at the very lest get our Washington DC trip published before we take our trip to San Diego so let me see how far I get !!!
Sadly though I cannot give you as much detail like I normally would just getting back from the trip but let's see how I do. This was a business trip for David which I tagged along on, my neighbor Colleen that we swap out time with, kept the girls while we were away, she has two boys so spoils my girls rotten :-) This was the last time that she and her boys stayed over at my house though, now that Amber is in a big girl bed she can stay over at their house, very nervous about that, we are trying sleepovers in Jades room so that when they stay there Jade and her will share a room too which hopefully will settle her enough for her to sleep well there. Colleen obviously tells me not to worry but I do coz having her boys here is like having another two big kids with less maintenance and well less supervision on my behalf, having Amber so little, even though she plays well with the big kids, just needs more of everything so we are very thankful to Colleen and Joe for always being so nice about taking her so Dave and I can have time away like this.
Anyway we left early on Saturday morning the 19th of May and stayed till Tuesday late afternoon when Dave was done, thankfully it is a short flight but gosh before I forget to tell you, there was a crazy storm over Charlotte so we were delayed leaving DC but when we got above Charlotte we couldn't land and so we circled for over an hour, it was scary being up there just hovering all that time but once we landed and got stuck in the storm on the way home, we cannot believe we actually landed safely, it was a crazy storm as I said that brought many trees down and did a good deal of damage ... but again thank God we got home safely, late but safely.
So yeah we left early in the morning so got to the hotel about midday that Saturday, we stayed at the beautiful Gaylord Hotel in National Harbor which too is so very pretty and right on the Pontomac River. What my mom would have loved too, her always having loved airplanes, the DC airport is built that the planes fly over the Pontomac and runway starts at the edge of the river, hard to explain but when taking off once the wheels go up you are over the river so I could virtually watch plans land from the hotel we were at. What is also amazing in it is such a busy airport that there is never a time you are not hearing a plane come over or seeing the sky without a plane in it, totally weird for me really.
Back to the hotel, it is this beautiful hotel with like a large glass dome structure over it ... hard to explain but inside that structure there are shops and a very green area with beautiful plants and trees and even a large fountain feature in the middle that dances to music every hour, so pretty ... anyway here are a few pics of it, doesn't really do it justice but it was a very pretty hotel.
This was inside the glass dome.
This was some of the garden outside the hotel, inbetween the hotel and the Pontomac River, it was a huge area so this really doesn't show too much but it was so pretty.
This was a yucky overcast day but still look how pretty that was, imagine it with clear blue sky, loved it so much, miss living close to water.
This was the fountains inside the hotel, or that glass done, in the background you can see that many of the rooms have a balcony that overlooks this whole area and really out to the Pontomac too, sadly we didn't get one of these rooms but still at least it was a short walk away.
This was taken from upstairs, there were nice places to buy breakfast and just sit in this courtyard area, I did that most mornings, just so relaxing.
More inside pics, the stores were quaint but were surrounded by all these beautifully manicured trees and flowers, all which are real, non of it is artificial. You constantly in the evenings see people working on them to keep it in tip top shape.
I could have posted so many pics of amazing boats but there were many of these parked right there in the harbor, definitely a place for the rich !!!
This is a picture of National Harbor from a water taxi we took over to Old Town. Very nice 'Waterfront' area but very expensive, high end stores and fancy restaurants.
Not such an expensive restaurant :-) Yep Dave was in Heaven, we ate there way more than we needed to and yeah it was our first meal in DC without a doubt, in walking distance from our hotel, too cool. Wish we were able to take some bottles back with us but we didn't check any luggage so no this time :-(
It was very different from the Nandos in SA, fancier for sure, you ordered up front as seen here below and then your food was brought to your table, nice crockery and cutlery and many choices of sauces to choose from, did I say Dave was in Heaven, for sure !!!
This is a weird park / artwork which the kids loved, very busy on the weekends.
After lunch we took a long, pretty water taxi ride over to Old Town which feels a lot like Charleston or Savannah, very cute, only we arrived over there quite late so many of the stores had closed already, guess being a small place they close early, I don't know was kind of weird for them to close so early especially in season as such.
The area where you catch the water taxi back was so pretty, very SA Waterfront kind of feeling, but there were street artist which were very cool, it was also prom night for some schools in the area and it was so pretty just to watch all these kids which really look so grown up have their pics taken over there. Lots of pretty sights, big boats, sail boats, oh and lots of low flying airplanes, very nice there and it was starting to get to sun down so it was cool and just really nice.
Sitting on the dock waiting for the water taxi I took this shot but it's a little deceiving because I used a huge zoom lens to show you our hotel from over at Old Town, but thought it was a pretty shot.
There's a water taxi like the one we took.
Not a bad sunset on our trip back to National Harbor.
Nice evening vibe when we got back over to National Harbor, really nice place to stay.
Some nice sights for Dave too :-)
That was the end of Saturday ... then Sunday, not so sure how much of this will actually interest you but Dave and I took a 7 hour walking tour, OMG what the heck was I thinking and it was really hot and well I did it in flip flops which actually wasn't too bad considering how hot it was but anyway, but yeah we took the most amazing tour of DC and all important tourist stops and memorials ... would I do it again, yes but we would do it over two days and spend more time at each place, it was 7 hours but so rushed, felt I needed more time to stop and look and just really take it all in but anyway we did it, that's all that matters :-)
These are all the places we saw, some of which I will post pics but some were just drive by's or places we stopped but didn't actually get off the bus just heard more about them.
- STOPS : White House
- United States Capital
- Lincoln Memorial
- Vietnam Memorial
- World War 2 Memorial
- Jefferson Memorial
- Korean Memorial
- Arlington Cemetery
- Tomb Of The Unknown Soldier
- JFK Grave Site
- Changing Of The Guard
- Iwo Jima Memorial
- Pentagon 9/11 Memorial
- Air force Memorial
- Martin Luther King Jr Memorial
- DRIVE BY : Washington Monument
- National Archives
- Federal Reserve
- FDR Memorial
- Navy Memorial
- National Gallery Of Art
- FBI
- IRS
- Kennedy Center
- US Senate And House Office Buildings
- Lafayette Park
- US Holocaust Memorial.
Yep tell me about it, that was a heck of a lot to see in 7 hours, our little tour guide lady was on the ball too and man she walked like she was on a mission that was for sure but as I said it was cool just wished we had more time at some of the places.
Here are some of our gazillion pics.
This is the US Capital, sadly many of our pics are not great tourist pics coz as far as I was concerned we could not have picked a worse time to visit to take pics, it is the run up to the inauguration and DC was being revamped and repainted and cleaned from top to bottom so there were workers everywhere and scaffolding everywhere, even the pool in front of the Washington Monument was drained, so sad, oh well at least we can now watch the inauguration this year and say 'we were there' (hehehe) !!!
Our guide actually took us on the mile plus walk around this Capital building, it's very pretty and if fact probably the size I expected the White House to be ... more on that later :-)
This was the World War II Memorial, probably one of the prettiest of all the memorials, it was also a war my gran was part of so it held a bit more significance to me, wish we could have spent more time here.
This wall of gold stars was to the left of the fountains above, mind blowing that each star and there are 4048 of them represents 100 soldiers or servicemen or people that either died or remain missing from that war, wow. What was just amazing to me is how beautiful all these memorials are and how appreciative this country is to all those serve for them and sadly die for them too. Every monument is crazy busy so you know there are people playing respect every day there, love love love it and being part of it all. What a history my kids are going to be part of, can't wait to do this all with them when they are older and learn more about it all.
So much thought goes into each Monument, amazing really.
This is the Washington Monument that you can see from the WWII Memorial.
This is the Jefferson Memorial, gosh you see this in so many movies, to be there was just so surreal to me.
And it's way bigger than it looks in this picture, so beautiful inside.
This was the Martin Luther King Jr Memorial ... all I can say is DC has way too much marble just laying around, golly these Memorials are huge and so beautiful.
You can tell this is one of the newer ones, very different look to it.
This is one of my favorite of all the Memorials, The Korean War Memorial, just such a real looking scene, beautiful.
The Lincoln Memorial.
And the man himself :-)
Vietnam Veterans Statue, love these big iron statues.
Vietnam Veterans Memorial, seems so much more real than looking at gold stars on the wall at the WWII Memorial. Here they have the names of all the lives lost in the order than they died if you can believe that. Guess it's a more or less order but still mind blowing. They have these huge books at the end of each end of this memorial, they have the names in alphabetical order so if you were looking for a name it would make it easier to find. Wow !!! No Kropmans, we looked ...
Yep we are at the White House !!! Now the funny thing to me was that after being at the Palace in London the White House seems like an average American Home, Dave had to keep reminding me it's a house not a palace but still I expected it to be so much bigger, I mean in all the pictures and all the stuff you see on TV it just looks so much bigger, still surreal to be standing right outside it, where in a couple of months with the new president election happening, standing on the grounds of history, wow.
Air Force memorial.
Iwo Jima Memorial, how many times have we seen that picture, to actually be standing right there, here's a funny thing though, while our tour guide was giving us the run down of this statue and the history behind each man portrayed, a man walked over and told us that he comes there a lot because he is related to one of the men in the statue, thought that was cool, first thought it was probably bogus but our guide was very knowledgeable on all these men and said he knew a lot of detail it could be true. Cool.
Now although Nandos was the highlight of the DC trip for Dave this was my highlight, standing at the foot of the grave of JFK. Living in SA I always loved following their story never for one minute back then thinking I would ever be standing right here at the foot of his grave or living in his country and my kids calling this country home ... very teary eyed moment for me.
This was Robert Kennedy's grave stone, he wanted a simple white cross and that is what he got, not too far from the JFK grave site but still weird because his cross was so much simpler than all the other regular Arlington Cemetery gravestones, to be 'American Royalty' as such, seemed strange but I guess it was what he wanted.
The guard at the grave of the unnamed soldier, they have a changing of the guard every hour and schools lay a new wreath every hour, a nice ceremony but so different again to the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace. The story is that there is actually no body in that grave anymore, when DNA helped to discover the person that was buried there his family had him removed and buried somewhere else, thought that was weird too because this is such a honor to be layed here but I guess he was no longer a mystery is what his family thought. But they still pay respect to all the other unnamed soldiers right here at this spot every hour every day, did I say I love this country, wow.
Just grave after grave after grave, this cemetery is huge.
What you see in the movies only so so so very much bigger.
Ok so that was the end of our 7 hour tour, again was amazing but as you can see we covered so much that really I would have loved to have done it slower.
Monday Dave went off to work and the weather was yucky so I did a little adventure on my own, I caught a bus from National Harbor to the Metro and caught the Metro to Pentagon City, this is a huge 4 story mall opposite the Pentagon.
This is a very dark picture taken on my cell, there were cops everywhere and they were asking people not to take pics all the time but I snuck this one, huge mall this is just a small section of it.
Then when the rain stopped but as you can see the weather was still yucky I walked across this huge road to the Pentagon, wow yeah I was right there inside the Pentagon grounds. I went to go see the 9/11 Pentagon Memorial, it's so pretty and will get prettier every year as those trees grow and eventually most of it will be shaded. This picture does it no justice at all but there were signs everywhere saying we were not allowed to take pictures so I didn't want to take out the big camera. Those benches had water running under them, very smartly worked out and if the bench faced the Pentagon building then that person had worked at the Pentagon but if it faced the sky then it was someone that lost their lives on the flight that hit the Pentagon. The memorial is also right next to where the plan hit and you can look at the building and see exactly which part is newly built, goosebumps moment for me for sure. Not having been to NYC yet to see the big memorial there but having watched it all for years and years and on that terrible day, to be here and see it and have airplanes flying over you the entire time you are there, goosebumps moment for sure !!!
After that I headed back to the hotel but a Metro train had derailed which rerouted all the trains so it too me hours to get home on a very packed very yucky metro, me as a very nervous passenger / tourist was happy to eventually make it back to National Harbor after having to switch trains at a bunch of different stops to get back to where I needed to me, oh my golly ... but yeah what an experience.
After that I thought maybe on the Tuesday I should stick close to the hotel (hehehe) so I walked the stores, had a bunch at a restaurant called Ketchup which served probably the best burger I have every had but with about 12 different flavor ketchups, very interesting, just finished up there, was able to sit and take in the scenery one last time and Dave called saying he got out early time to leave.
By by DC, loved my trip !!!
REMEMBER TO SCROLL UP AND DOWN NOT TO MISS ANYTHING.
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