It was an early day so we could get to the Capitol building for our early tour. We walked with with empty hands to make sure we didn’t get held up at security. After successfully getting through security, we were off on our tour. We were shown 3 rooms. The first one had huge pillars and was designed to have George Washington buried in the middle in a crypt but it was not finished until 30 years after he died. The second room was the rotunda with huge oil paintings and statues and a very large fresco in the top dome that everyone recognizes from the outside. The last room consisted of many statues and was called the statue room. All the statues had to follow strict rules in order to be included.
We took the circulator bus to the Jefferson monument. It was a huge picture taking day. We stood in front of Jefferson for an another group photo. We walked to the shore of the river and the United States security helicopters flew by with the doors open. The girls waved to the helicopters and the security men waved back. We walked down to the Roosevelt monument which included a park and some beautiful waterfalls. I bought a frisbee at the gift shop so we could play in the grass. Then we went over to the Martin Luther King statue for another photo. After that we walked back to the Roosevelt park to wait for our pizza delivery. Finally it was time for lunch.
Following pizza, we took a short stroll to the Korean War memorial. Upon arrival we were greeted with a pond and a US flag flying in the wind. The pond was surrounded by multiple marble plaques listing the the names of more than 50,000 American fallen soldiers. In addition to all of this, the memorial was finished off with 19, 7 foot stainless steel statues dressed in ponchos with rifles representing American soldiers trekking through Korean swamps. We continued on to the Lincoln memorial which we saw on the night tour and stopped for popsicles and ice cream and continued to the Vietnam war memorial. We admired the 150 foot wall listing names of fallen soldiers from this war. Following the war memorial we crossed the road to admire the Einstein statue. Smile again.
The World War II memorial was on the way to the Washington monument and it was surrounded by pillars of all 50 states and a beautiful water fountain. We got a little time to look around the memorial and we dipped our feet in the water just like the soldiers did after the war. As we were we sitting with our feet in the water, some ducks swam up to us and some people thought the ducks were going to eat their toes. Then we started walking toward the very tall Washington monument at 555 feet tall. As we approached the monument it almost didn’t look real and looked like it was about to fall on us because of the cloud movement. Around the monument were 50 American flags representing the 50 American states. We took so many amazing pictures at the monument with a setting on our phone of 0.5 so we could get the whole monument in the shot. We took the circulator bus back and got back to the hotel for a swim before dinner. We had a lovely Shabbat dinner at the hotel where Mr. Kouperman’s friend and CJA alumni had brought us candles and challah. After dinner we went to swim for a second time and hopefully it’ll help us get a great sleep.
