We were up by 5am! Well, Tim was. I stayed in bed a little longer. We caught a bus on the site at 7am. This bus was going to cost just $2 each for a return ticket to Union Station. The result was, we were eating our packed lunches by 8.30am on the steps of the Capitol.
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| Capitol (breakfast!) |
Our hop on, hop off bus wasn't starting til 9am so we toddled off to the Library of Congress as that was the only thing open. This was one of the most amazing buildings we had ever seen! It was all made of marble so it wouldn't burn. Twice before in its history it had been burned down.
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| Library of Congress |
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| Reading room in Library of Congress |
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| A strange man in the corridor |
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| A strange woman on a pillar |
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| Where's Wally? |
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| There he is again! |
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| Guttenburg Bible, VERY old. Printed in 1455. |
The hop on, hop off bus tour was great fun. We walked miles, hopping on and off, until we were worn out with all the hopping!
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| The commentary was even in our language |
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| Ooops |
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| Lincoln Memorial |
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| Ruth and her mate Abraham Lincoln |
There was an unusual amount of activity with the security people while we were in DC. According to the Big Bus guy, Obama, Hillary, and Trump were all in DC today. They didn't even stop to pass the time of day with us.
First a helicopter.
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| The police bikes wailing |
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| Followed by the big brass. All at high speed and noisy! |
This happened twice while we were there. On one occasion, Tim was in the road (of course he was!) and was waved back by the police. Tim waved back. Ruth thought he was telling him to get out of the road.
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| The White House |
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| Religious nutter by the roadside |
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The sun was in our eyes
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Travelling on, we were able to cross the river Potomac (which which we had stood in 100 miles away) to see the Pentagon. What a huge place.
Fact 1. There are 284 bathrooms (toilets).
Fact 2. There are 5,100,000 square feet of office space.
Fact 3. There are no elevators. You have to use ramps or stairs.
Fact 4. It has 17.5 miles of corridors.
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| Pentagon |
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| Arlington cemetery |
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| The Kennedys graves. |
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| Part of JFK's inaugural speech in 1961 |
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| Changing of the guard at the grave of the unknown soldier, Arlington cemetery |
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| War memorial, Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima |
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| Japanese tourists livened up the place a bit |
Albert Eistein
At the Air & Space museum.
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| Moon landing |
The Apollo 11 moon landing command module was pretty small. It was only about 3 metres tall. It took the first 3 men that went to the moon, back to earth, entering the earth's atmosphere at 22,000 miles per hour. It got scorched.
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| Apollo 11 command module |
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| Rockets |
We got home, shattered at about 6 pm to the campsite. But an absolutely great day.
