Washington DC

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Wednesday 28th May - Thursday 29th May

We took the 9:05am flight to Washington DC which required an early start and another trip on Chicago’s Public Transport system. The flight to Washington was pretty easy with the exception of the two brats who were seated behind us.

We took public transport to our motel which was pretty easy. The only issue was how far it was from the Metro Station (we were to find when we were leaving DC that there was a free shuttle ). The place was nice been a suite and having a separate kitchen. It also had a laundry so we could do some washing .

After a couple of hours we headed off to explore the area. We were actually staying in Arlington not DC which is across the river (one stop on the Metro.) The first place we went to was the Pentagon, which had serious guards, with assault rifles, who warned us against taking pictures. We had a look at the September 11th memorial which was quite sombre.

At this point we split up with Brenda going to the Pentagon fashion mall and my going to the Arlington war cemetery. I’m told the mall was pretty crowded. The cemetery was quiet (exception was a few groups of school children) and very pretty. Seeing all those crosses was pretty sombre. I managed to see the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier (complete with Marines doing the last post) and JFK’s grave.

The next day we checked out and had five or six hours to see the sights. Here we saw the Lincoln Monument, the Washington Monument, the White House, Treasury, the Vietnam Memorial Wall. All were free to see and it was pretty good, but did require a lot of walking.

In the Afternoon we went to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, which I fond cool. I could have spent a whole day here, Brenda on the other hand got board after about twenty minutes, we compromised by spending an hour and a half. They have some pretty cool exhibits such as the Wright brothers plane, ICBMs, parts of the Apollo missions, parts of the Soviets space mission. It was very impressive.

After this time we headed to the Airport, we were tired after walking around all day, but ready to head to our next city, New York.

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