Washington DC, Day 1

Today was a very full day. We started off with a guided tour at the National Archives. Danielle was complaining she was bored 2 minutes into the docent's talk, but Tyler thought it was interesting. Within the Archives, the Charters of Freedom houses the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights. The ink is now so faint that you can hardly read the documents anymore, yet it's still moving to look at such important pieces of history.

After our tour, we stopped for lunch on our way to the Bureau of Engraving & Printing. We ate outside, and this squirrel wanted our food. We saw this other squirrel trying to stay cool. It was quite warm today!

Both kids are equipped with cameras on this vacation, so we had to make lots of stops for photo ops. Their pictures are funny. After vacation I'll try to get each of them to post a couple of their favorites.

Once we made it to the BEP, we waited in line for a tour to see how & where they print our money (the notes, not the currency). It was a rather long wait, but the tour was very interesting. The kids really enjoyed watching all those hundreds get printed, cut, & stacked into bricks. On one little tiny pallet of finished bills, we did the math and counted $2,560,000. Wow! Of course, they are quick to point out that none of it is actually worth anything yet because the Federal Reserve hasn't monetized it yet. I think we could make it through quite a bit of that pile before anyone realized it wasn't monetized!


After our tour, we grabbed a taxi and headed to the Capitol. Since we cheated and took a taxi, we got there a little early and had time to explore the Thomas Jefferson building of the Library of Congress. What a gorgeous building! We looked at Jefferson's library, too. Although you can't actually touch any of the books, they have digital copies you can read. Tyler thought it was fun to browse those. The next time we visit DC, I think it would be worth it to take a LOC tour. We just don't have time on this trip.

We made it to the US Capitol ahead of schedule and got put in with an earlier tour group, which I thought was very convenient. This was the only tour I was disappointed with. (BTW, you can only tour the Capitol now by submitting a request to your state representative.) There was so much to see, yet the tour guide rushed us through. All of the tour guides seemed to be doing that. I felt like we really didn't have enough time to explore or take pictures. It is such a beautiful building, though. They now show a movie at the beginning of the tour. It talks about how & why congress was formed. It was very interesting. Ron and I think our current Congressmen should all be made to watch it, lest they lose sight of their true purpose and function (which so many of them have). The kids thought the movie was super boring, but they liked the rest of the tour. (Tyler more so than Danielle.) We all had to wear headphones so we could hear the tour guide. The kids liked that novelty. The statue is a plaster mold of Freedom. Her bronze statue is on top of the Capitol's dome. And speaking of "on top of the dome" - as you can see in one of my pictures, there was a guy out there working today. That is one job I certainly would not want!

After our tour, we walked across the street to look at the Supreme Court. There is so much symbolism on the building, but I can't remember all of it. At this point we were all near exhaustion, so we really couldn't even muster enough energy to walk up the steps. We had dinner at Tortilla Coast just down the block and then grabbed the Metro back to the hotel.

After some time in the pool, we drove back into DC and visited the Lincoln Memorial. I forgot my tripod, so my pictures aren't nearly as crisp as they could be. The Memorial was impressive though and, as one kid yelled on his way down the steps, "it looks just like the back of a penny!" The view across the mall to the Washington Monument was beautiful, too. I'll try to post a couple of those pictures tomorrow. I'm nodding off now...

Tomorrow we are headed to Ford's Theatre & Petersen House and to Arlington National Cemetery.