July 3, 2009

What a busy day. We got up our usual time around 7:30 and every thing just kept moving after that. We had some breakfast, and basically kept on moving. Loading just the bear essentials into the car (Us, water, maps, money, cameras,) we headed off ot the metro station that is not far from my cousins house in downtown Alexandria where se is able to give us guest parking permits for the next week so that we don’t have to part at the metro station.

While we headed out to the metro station I began to feel light headed. This is the sensation that I’m familiar with when my blood pressure is low. So we stopped at a Safeway supermarket and purchased a bag of pretzels and some more water. The pretzels worked great and I felt better within a couple of hours.

We took the yellow line from Braddock station to La’Enfant plaza and walked out on to the mall. We had discussed yesterday that our primary objective today was to get the “lay of the land” and ride one of the ever present Tour Mobiles that give you hop on and hop off privileges.

It was a beautiful day with light winds, not too hot not too windy. Everything was perfect.

So out side the Air and space museum we caught the tourmobile and headed around the mall out to the capital and then eventually down to Arlington cemetery, where we got off for a while.

Walking through the cemetery is beautiful. What a scenic and sobering area. It seems like miles and miles of headstones (which there are). There are approximately 360,000 military and families entombed at the site, with about 21 new entombments everyday.

After seeing the tomb of the Unknown Soldier and watching the amazing changing of the guard we headed down the path to the Kennedy gravesite.

Since the tour mobile will be closed for the 4th of July we were able to get the tour of the Arlington in for free (basically).

Leaving Arlington we caught another tour mobile and headed east back into the Mall, our next stop was the Lincoln Memorial.

What a amazing place, huge beyond your initial impressions from afar, with the masses of people all along the memorial.

We viewed the Korean and Vietnam memorials as well each amazing. When we arrived at the Vietnam memorial we got there just as one of the park volunteers what giving a 30 minute talk on the memorial which was extremely moving as well as infor4mitive. If you haven’t been to the wall, you should go.

We left the wall and headed towards the capital to see the rehearsal of the performances on the lawn of the capital for the 4th of July walking through the World War II memeorial and past the Washington monument.

We never got into the area where we would be able to see the rehearsal because of the lines for security but by that time we were in need of some food and it was getting late.

And frankly we were both tired and getting a bit grumpy.

After we ate we headed back to the Metro and back to the Misura’s to unwind and relax a bit (it was 10:00 by the time we actually got back).

When I finally let my eyes closed I crashed hard. A great ending to a wonderful day.