Today was a big day of sight-seeing and walking...Everyone made it fine, but after more than 6 1/2 miles of walking we all decided it was the perfect time to order pizza and hang out in the hotel room tonight....We got to see Arlington National Cemetery and the west end of the National Mall....Below is the path we made today as we had an exciting day as the weather was perfect and Gary was the leader of the pack....
Left the Hotel Harrington and took the metro from Metro Center to Foggy Bottom-GWU...Had breakfast in the GWU hospital cafeteria (actually right at the metro station and very good--good, unusual find).....Took the metro to Arlington National Cemetery....Used the tourmobile service which stopped at JFK's gravesite (also saw the Supreme Court Justices' graves in the same area), then at the Tomb of the Unknowns (viewed the memorial sites plus Audie Murphy's grave in the same area), and then the third stop at the Lee-Custis House where we toured Robert E. Lee's old home that the Union stole from him at the beginning of the Civil War (also Abner Doubleday is buried behind the house)....We we got back to the visitor's center, we decided to walk the 1.5 miles across Memorial Bridge to the Lincoln Memorial area....Gary won the race across the bridge, but said he would have paid $15 for a cold Dr. Pepper....After getting some water, we strolled up through the Korean War Memorial then up the steps to the Lincoln Memorial....Making our way northeat, Gary finally got to see the long awaited Vietnam Memorial Wall where he found a name he recognized....We grabbed a hotdog on a corner stand by The Fed before heading to the best memorial of all, World War II Memorial, which is fairly new and located between the Washington and Lincoln Memorials.....Gary and Joan both made some new friends as a group of WWII vets from Wisconsin were being escorted by a group called Operation Resolve (Mr. Wink said he was in a submarine that got stuck in the mud and the rocked the sub until they got out of the mud 130-plus feet deep in the Pacific).....Next was the best part because we got Gary to ride 500 feet up the Washingotn Monument to get a bird's eye view of the Nation's Capital (What a View!)......Although we were wearing down, we finished with a trek across The Ellipse up the the south lawn of the White house, then around the Eisenhower Executive Office Building and then east on Pennsylvania Avenue to view the north lawn of the White House in the daylight.....We concluded our day with the six block stroll back to the Hotel Harrington.....According to Google, we walked 6.6 miles.....Below are a few pictures from early in the day....
Tomorrow is going to be spent on Capitol Hill, where we plan to visit a few offices, Supreme Court, Library of Congress, and the Capitol.....Another day of walking but plenty to do and see....Weather is suppose to be even better tomorrow.....
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