Washington D.C. Trip - Day 1

Ok, so it has been a long time since I have posted to the blog.  But, seeing how this is one of the best ways to share some larger format pictures and provide a little narrative, we'll try to do this again.
I'll post one day at a time, since it will probably be more than I'm willing to do all at once.

So here we go.

Day 1 - Monday, April 14, 2014

The Prequel: Technically we arrived in Washington D.C. Sunday evening and took the Metro to our hotel. . . or what I thought was our hotel.  Yes, I didn't look closely at the itinerary and ended up taking my family late at night to the wrong Residence Inn.  Thankfully, they were able to point me in the right direction and call us a cab to take us to the correct location.  We got everyone to bed by about 1:00 am. :)

Actual Day 1 activities:
The tour of the capitol building.  Aside from having to throw away lots of food in our backpack because they wouldn't let us in with it, things went pretty well.  (Marthe about lost it when we had to throw away a brand new jar of peanut butter).
The main level of the Capitol is closed for renovations on the Rotunda.  So we only were able to see the lower level areas.

 Here's one of the lower rooms where the judiciary branch used to meet.

The Capitol had lots of great floor patterns.

Lots of the ceilings had decorative paint instead of actual architectural ornament.

Sadie was excited to see the Capitol.

Spencer learned about these little doors where they used to store buckets of water in case there was a fire.

This was the dome below the rotunda.  The dome below the dome.

This is the "Bloodied Staircase" where someone was murdered.  Stains on the staircase are said to be the blood of the victim.

Years of use have actually worn the marble stairs down so you can see how much thinner the stairs are in the middle compared to the sides.

This was an interesting railing that was added sometime in the 1970s.

The star in this picture is below the lower dome, exactly centered on the Capitol Rotunda dome.  It was supposed to be the final resting spot for George Washington.  However, he had other ideas of where he wanted his final resting place.  So no one was ever put there.

The Library of Congress was perhaps the most impressive building we saw.  Below is the main hall skylights..

 Tommy really like the building.

Floor patterns were very interesting as well.

A detail shot in the main reading room.

Here is an overall shot of the reading room.

This is the dome above the reading room.

We walked a lot, but  there was always something to take a photo of.

We visited the Holocaust Museum and went through the children's portion.  We did not go through the main exhibit due to the ages of our children.  Even "Daniel's Story" was a bit much for Marthe and I.  At the end, the kids can write Danny a note.  This is what Sadie wrote.

After the Holocaust Museum, we walked over to try and see some Cherry Blossoms.  Most of them were blown away as a storm was coming in.  We did find these blossoms next to the dumpster.  But thankfully no one can tell that the dumpster is right next to me.  But it was still fun to see a good glimpse of the Jefferson Memorial.

We then went over to the American History Museum, where our kids got to see what it looks like to give a Presidential speech.

They had a sunstone from the original Nauvoo Temple.

And a dish.

The new "Old Glory" display. . . isn't quite as impressive as it was when the original flag was flying.  But the whole thing is supported from a single point, which was kind of cool.  We did get to see the original flag.  But it was under very dim light and laying on a platform behind glass.  It was more like going to see someone at a viewing versus seeing them alive and well.

A couple of final shots:

We were pretty tired after getting back to the hotel, especially after only getting a few hours of sleep the night before.  Stay tuned for pictures posted of our Day 2.