Day 33 Summer 2011 Road Trip

Today we got up early and had breakfast.  At 9:00am we got into the free shuttle from the hotel to the New Carrollton Metro station for our Metro subway ride into Washington DC.

We got off at the L’Enfant station and went up to the surface to board our tour bus.  This bus follows a circular loop with many stops along the way and you can get on and off at your leisure.  There are 2 other loops that other buses do and you can transfer onto those buses to go to other popular destinations.  We figured out what we wanted to see and do today so we knew what bus to be on and what stops to get off at.

As a side note, but appropriate to our visit to Washington DC, today is President Barack Obama’s birthday.

Our first stop is the Lincoln Memorial.  This was built to honour the 16th President of the United States.

  

From up on the top steps of the Lincoln Memorial, I pointed the camera towards the Washington Monument and what should have been the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, except for the fact that the Reflecting Pool has been torn out and is being rebuilt.



We then walked a short distance to the Korean War Veterans Memorial.  It commemorates those who served in the Korean War.

  

There is also a reflecting wall and a reflecting pool at the Memorial.

  

Another short walk and we are at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

This is the bronze statue named “The Three Soldiers”



And this is the Memorial Wall where the names of 58,267 dead or missing soldiers are etched into the highly polished stone wall.

  

Leaving the Memorial, we walked along beside what would have been the Reflecting Pool towards the National World War II Memorial.

  

I turned around and took this photo looking back to where we had been at the Lincoln Memorial.

 

Here are some more photos of the National WWII Memorial.

  

Next we are going to walk over to the base of the Washington Monument.  Built to commemorate the 1st President of the United States.  This is the tallest structure in Washington DC.




Back on the bus we head across the Potomac River to visit Arlington National Cemetery.  We will visit John F. Kennedy’s grave site.

  

John F. Kennedy, his wife Jackie and his two deceased children are buried at this site.  The markers are black slate and it is very hard to read their names on the markers.  I thought it was a rather simple grave site for such an important person and President of the United States of America.  The eternal flame is at the head in the middle of John and Jackie’s markers.  The flame is lit but it does not show up in my photos.

  

Kennedy’s grave is on a sloping hill that looks directly at the Washington Monument.



There is also a granite wall with engravings of excerpts of some of Kennedy’s most famous speeches.  This is one of those excerpts.



Elsewhere in Arlington National Cemetery there was a military burial taking place and out of nowhere came this military plane in fast and low to honour the person being buried.



This concluded our visit today to Washington DC, we got back on the tour bus and headed back to the Federal Triangle Metro subway stop and rode back to our stop at New Carrollton where the hotel shuttle picked us up and took us to our hotel.

There are a few more sites around Washington that we want to see tomorrow.

Till then….

Don’t forget to see all of the photos, just click on this link to FLICKR.