Vacation to Washington DC and surrounding areas + a tag

So, a couple of weeks ago, I came back from vacation. I went to Washington DC and some surrounding areas, which was a lot of fun(but very tiring). We drove for two days through many states, several of which I'd never visited before, which was neat! :) I had a good book to read, plus I watched The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug three times on the entire trip(also watched a bit of Vampire Knight, re-watched parts of The Two Towers, and re-watched some ATLA as well) which made the whole trip go by faster :).

    On our first day, we took the Metro(sort of like a subway, but above ground most of the time) to Arlington Cemetery, which is where soldiers are buried, as well as Kennedy and several of his family members. Above is a picture of the museum for Women in the military :D

                                                               Visitor's center

                                                        IMPORTANT!!

                         For some reason, some of the tombstones were backwards....which was weird.

                                                        Flame by the Kennedy graves.

                                     SHERLOCK! What are you doing here? We all know you aren't dead.

Little cross.

 Eren Jaeger, is that you? Uh oh.....

 Little monument dedicated to the unidentifiable soldiers who were buried here during the Civil War.

Greek/Roman style pavilion. Really pretty! :)

Bertolt!? You too?

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Many countries have these(there's one in London as well), and it represents the soldiers who died in war and were never identified.

Changing of the Guard.

The tomb

A nearby building, which had some really great Greek/Roman architecture. Love the Corinthian style columns(which you can see above).

One of the soldier dudes. I wish we could have seen a girl.

cool little entrance.

They weren't perfectly in sync. I caught their mess up >:D

A closer shot of the muesuem of women who have served in military service. As someone who cares a lot about women having the ability to be in the military(all bans were FINALLY lifted not all that long ago), this made me really happy :).

Some quotes(sorry if they are hard to read).

The Washington Monument. I didn't realize before it was a light gray/brown- it always looked white in the pictures I'd seen.

The capital building. You know, for some reason, the grass around the capital was awful and long; it really needed to be mowed. Congress really is wasting our tax dollars, aren't they? :P They can't even keep the dang lawn clean.

The WHITE HOUSE!! :D Really cool to see the building! Sadly, we put our request for a tour in too late so we didn't get to go inside. We did get to take pictures of the front and back though. Also, wished we could have seen the President, but that would have been a one in a million chance.

PRETTY! :D

One thing that happened that was pretty cool was, when we were walking around the White House, I saw this guy with a Fullmetal Alchemist shirt on! I told him I thought it was a cool shirt, and he did the hands together movement used in alchemy(on the show). It really made my day! :D

HELLO PRESIDENT OBAMA!!! :D

The back of the White House.

Pennsylvania Ave.

Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream. There was a protest for protecting the environment going on while we were at the capital that week, and during it, they were handing out Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream to everyone. Since my family and I support protecting the environment, and since I love this kind of Ice Cream(it's good and one of the few brands I can have), we went and got some. Yummy! :)

Statue

The information center of the Smithsonian. Very pretty building- love the Gothic architecture.

Washington Monument

Trying to make it look like I'm holding a sword. Didn't turn out too well -_-

This makes me think of eye slits in a hood.

The next day, we got up early and left to get ready for a LONG day. We walked more than 6 miles that day and my feet and ankles hurt so much! :O

My shadow looks weird and not like me at all....O_O

I though this was a cool shot :)

TALL!

Touching the wall

My brother next to the Washington Monument.

The Lincoln Memorial from far away(I zoomed in; I took this from the Washington Monument).

The World War 2 Memorial is a new one right in front of the Lincoln one. It's pretty cool looking and they did a good job with it. Here is the Pacific side.

The Atlantic side.

There was a pole with various branches of the military on it. If I were to join the military, I would join the Marine Corps.

A picture of a soldier(who most likely died) who served in Germany during the war. There were several flowers left my certain countries on both sides of the monument.

Lincoln memorial.

We had to leave before going into the Lincoln memorial(we went in later that night), since we had to hurry over to the Capital Building(we had a tour scheduled). If you don't know, this is a VERY LONG WALK!

A statue in the waiting room.
Sadly, our tour guide(someone who worked in our region's Representative's office) wasn't loud enough and was biased. My dad asked what as being discussed in congress that day, and she started getting all happy about the dumb 'trying to get the President impeached'; then, my mom told her that not everyone from our state thought that way(seriously, you work for the government, you shouldn't be putting your personal thoughts in their that much to people; you represent all us, not just the majority).

Old Supreme Court.

The painting of George Washington ascending to heaven(I think).

Some statues.

Corinthian style pillars! :D

Capital Building dome.

After our tour, we decided we wanted to look around a little bit(and have lunch) before we went and visited the Senate/House of Representative chambers. Our first stop was the Library of Congress, which as beautiful! :D

Look at the art and the architecture! :D It's gorgeous!

Next we stopped by the Supreme Court(where several jerks work :P). We didn't go inside, but we did take a couple of pics.

After that we went to lunch at this really good burger place where the Obama's have been quite a few times. Both the President and First Lady even have burgers named after them! :) (here's a picture I found in the restaurant).

Next, we went into the Capital building to see the Senate and House chambers. In there, we had to deal with a big, old bitch of a security guard. I HATE her :P She made us throw our food away(I ate my apple, though- TAKE THAT BITCH!). Yeah, you can tell I didn't like her. I don't like Security guards, they are such a pain. :P

We first went into the Senate chamber, which didn't have many people sitting in it. In there was some senator guy who was blah blahing about how bad healthcare was which was kind of annoying since I hear that all the time where I live(and I support the Health Care Act). We then went to the House chamber, which had a much longer line. We went in there and everyone was milling around. I recognized several people in there which, sadly, where all the ones I DON'T like! :P. After that we headed back to the monuments to take the circuit route around so we could see them in succession.

Our first stop was Thomas Jefferson's memorial, which is pictured above.

Thomas Jefferson statue.

Looking at the monuments across the lake.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt memorial

Waterfall in Roosevelt's memorial

Eleanor Roosevelt! :D Love her!

Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial (and a quote)

Statue of Martin Luther King Jr.

Some quotes.

Korean War memorial.

Coming back to the Lincoln memorial.

Statue of Abraham Lincoln.

I really liked this shot of the statue that I got :) 

Vietnam War memorial. I'd seen pictures of this monument before, so seeing it real life was interesting.

Jean?!

Like at the WWII memorial, at both the Korean and Vietnam war memorials, flowers were left by the family members who'd had a relative fight/die in the war effort. It was really sad to see how many people died(and this didn't even count how many Vietnamese soldiers and civilians died in the war). We should not have been involved in this war or the Korean war.

After a long day of walking, we returned to our hotel exhaused(and of course, since it was out longest day, the guy picking us up to bring us back to the hotel was late AND the music he was playing in his car was TERRIBLE AND DISGUSTING!)

The next day, we headed out to see the various museums the Smithsonian had to offer.

Some flowers on the walk.

Our first museum to visit was the "National Museum of American History"

Our first stop in this museum was a place that explored the evolution of food in the US.

Mulan! :D <3 p="">

An old ship(a slave ship :P).

A train

Old cars

Our next stop was the "National Museum of Natural History", which was probably my favorite of them all! :)

An elephant at the front.

Manatee!! :D

Head of a T-Rex

The very first mammal(that we know of). It sure is tiny.

T-Rex!

My favorite part of the museum was the evolution of humans section. It was really informative and the topc is always something that has interested me. Here's a hand print on a wall.

 
Here's a cool relative of the homo sapiens. These were a small specials called homo floresensis, which resided on an island of Indonesia. They were the size of a little child and had to fight off giant lizards that wanted to eat them.

Also, cool fact. The neanderthals originated in Europe while the homo sapiens(humans) originated in either Africa or the Middle East(I've heard conflicting things about that). And contrary to popular belief, both were intelligent species(also, some people have neanderthal blood, since there was some intermingling between the two).

NEMO!

In the Natural History museum, they had a cool Korean exhibit. Here's a picture of a famous golfer from Korea(she has been an inspiration to many women in her country and in the world).

Traditional Korean wedding clothes. I love the outfits, especially the girls, they're so pretty(and the bride's is so colorful!) :)

Triceratops skeleton.

Our last museum of the day was the "National Air and Space Museum".

Moon landing painting. So cool! :)

Galaxy (with various kinds of light, more and more of this galaxy- Andromeda- can be seen).
It was really cool going through this museum, since I remembered reading about the space stuff in my astronomy textbook last year.

Amelia Earhart.

SATURN!! :D

The beautiful planets of our Solar system.

Saturn!

Space craft.

While there, I watched a show called "Dark Universe" which was narrated by Neil Tyson DeGrasee. It was a cool video and a lot of fun since I knew everything about(I remembered learning about dark matter and dark energy in astronomy).

The next day, we left DC and headed to Mt. Vernon, home of George Washington.

Coming upon Washington's home.
When we got there, we watched a neat little short film about Washington which was a lot of fun to watch. It romanticized Washington too much, but I still liked it(the battle scene was especially well done).

After watching the video, we got a tour of the house. It was an all right tour, but it was really short and we didn't get too see as much as I would have liked.

We weren't allowed to take many pictures of the inside, but we could in the kitchen. So here are some photos of that.

Bread oven.

Some stables of sorts.

George Washinton's grave site. Originally, he was buried with the family in an old grave. Later, however, they fulfilled his wish, and created a new burial for his family, his wife, and his self.

The original Washington grave site.

Mt. Vernon.

Some statues.

The next day, we went to two places before heading on our first leg home. Our first stop was the National Cathedral, which was absolutely stunning. Loved the Gothic architecture! :D You can tell it borrows from the time period(and looks like several cathedrals from Europe from that time).

One of the three astronauts to visit the moon went to the school on the cathedral's grounds, so when he got back, a piece of the moon was given to the church and was placed in this above stain-glassed window.

Sorry if some of the pictures look bad, the lighting wasn't that great.

Bishop's chair(which is what makes the church a cathedral. Plus, the bishop is a women! :D How cool is that?!).

The underground area.

A pretty painting.

Looking from a high up window.

Secret tunnel! Secret tunnel! Secret, secret, secret, secret TUNNEL! XD
Okay, I'll stop now....

The front of the church. If you look closely, you'll see similarities to Notre-Dame in Paris and Westminster Abbey in London.

The gardens behind the cathedral(we saw so many gardens on our trip...my mom is obsessed).
While we were here, me and my brother had fun telling each other riddles.

Our last stop of the trip was Monticello, home of our third President Thomas Jefferson.

A shot of the house.
We had a GREAT tour of the house. The guy giving it to us did a splendid job and we learned a lot. I also appreciated how he handled the slavery question(someone asked if Jefferson treated his slaves well and our tour guide gave us one of the best answers I've heard- he mentioned that slavery means owning someone, so that is very wrong and inhumane{it doesn't matter if you treat them decently or not, you still own them and that is the main evil} and even though Jefferson didn't personally treat the slaves badly, he had overseers that did and yet he did nothing about them).

The ocean view

More gardens.

This picture was so hard to get.

Jefferson's(and his family's) grave site.

We ate lunch at the Monticello food court and they awesomely had Gluten free food there!! :D YAY! :D I had a yummy BLT sandwich , which was really nice, as well as a corn and gluten free peanut butter cookie(and yogurt and chips). Really appreciated(since at other places, it was often "food food everywhere but nothing to eat").

We drove home that day and the day after and even though the trip was fun, I was thankful to be home. :)


I was tagged by Voronda from "A Believer's Journey" Thanks! :D

Thank and link back to the person who nominated you

list 11 facts about yourself

answer the 11 questions asked by the blogger who nominated you

nominate 11 bloggers who have fewer than 200 followers

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1. What was your favorite moment of summer so far?: Getting into so many new fandoms, getting my Blue Belt in TKD, getting my driver' license, and getting time to myself.

2. Since this was fun with Anna. First word or phase that comes to mind when you hear:

a) Pineapple: FOOD!

B) Force: Use the Force, Luke!

C)Mountain: We're climbing Mt. Evans(inside joke XD).

D) Skydiving Pandas: What the!?

E) Crossbow: Epic weapon to shoot bad people with >:D

3. What was the last book you read?: The Catcher in the Rye

4. Look up from the computer, whats the first thing you see?: welcome paper from my roommate

5. If you could have a mansion. What would you put in there?: Books, geeky stuff, movies/TV show sets, music, weapons, work out equipment, kicking/punching bags, a movie theater, etc

6) Ultimate Crush. Real or Fictional?: I don't have a current crush, but I have sort-of ones on Obi-Wan, Kili, Thorin, Armin, Ferus Olin, etc. 

7. Would you rather:

a) be a tiger for a day

or

b) an eagle?
Be a tiger- more chance of not dying.

8. Do you have a weird, obscure but somewhat useless talent?: Yeah, I know a lot about architecture which won't help me with my career paths

9. Your house if burning. What 4 things do you save?: People, my compter, pictures/videos, and books. 

10. If you could break any rules, what would be the first one you break?: The rule that you can't punch/kick people for being assholes. 

11. Do you like the new layout?(Yes, I went there!).: Yeah! The castles are cool!