Thursday April 1, 2010
Today was amazing! That’s all I can say about our first day in D.C! We started very early again, up at 6:15 for breakfast at 7 and then we were off. The morning was the time for some of the memorials. We went to the Teddy Roosevelt Memorial, the Franklin Roosevelt Memorial, Jefferson Memorial, and Arlington National Cemetery. Since Teddy was kind of an outdoorsy person and liked to explore, his memorial was on a little island. You had to walk across a bridge to get there then through this nature trail to get to the statue. FDR was gorgeous! All the cherry trees were in bloom around this giant pond and the Washington Monument was directly across. What great scenery. At the Jefferson Memorial there was a huge statue of him in the middle of the memorial. There were quotes on the walls of things that Jefferson said. It was pretty interesting to look at. The cemetery was so beautiful with all the cherry trees in bloom and all the stones in line, yet it was so sad to think of all the people and families that lie there.
After all the memorial touring in the morning, we went to the National Zoo! It was a beautiful day, clear sky, a few nice white puffy clouds, and the sun was out all day. It was about 85 degrees that day, a bit of a change for us Vermonters! A good amount of us got sun burn, including me. The animals were fun to see though, despite the heat. But all the walking in the morning and at the zoo tired us out and we were all thankful to be sitting on the bus in the air conditioning. After the zoo it was dinner time! We went to the Old Post Office to eat at the food court. When we finished dinner it was time for our night tour! It was a on and off bus tour with a guy named John, he was very cool! We went to the Korean War Memorial and the World War II, as well as the White House and Washington Monument. The White House was very cool to see! Some of us thought it would be a bit bigger but all the stories and history around it was interesting to hear. At the Washington Monument we had a fantastic view of the Capital which was all lit up. The Washington Monument concluded our first day in D.C. I am extremely tired, as all of us are, and it is nice to be heading back to the hotel for round two tomorrow! Very exciting!
Friday April 2, 2010
Today was equally as awesome! It started off early again, but we all lived! We had breakfast at the ESPN Zone and it was delicious. The ESPN Zone place was very cool though. They had the tv’s on with the highlights running. One of the highlights was of Marcus Blakely, on the UVM boys basketball team, winning the dunking contest. We had some time after we ate to go and explore downstairs in the arcade. It was the best arcade I have seen with so many games and different activities. One of my favorites that I did was this roller coaster simulator where you lied down on this chair and it moved and shook the chair a bit like you were on a roller coaster. Though it wasn’t like the real thing, it was still fun. There were other games like that as well like white water rafting where you had to actually steer and paddle. Then we had to leave, but we went shopping at the little Washington D.C. t-shirt and souvenir shops for a little while. After that came the Lincoln Memorial. That is one of my favorites because it has his Gettysburg Address on the wall and it has the spot where MLK stood to give his “I have a Dream…” speech. Also it was where Jenny and Forrest saw each other again in the Forrest Gump movie! We also went to the Vietnam War Memorial. It was very sad to see all the names engraved on the wall. There was just so many. There could easily have been several hundred names on each section. Seeing all these war memorials really makes you think about the people of our country. I know it made me think. It is honoring to see all the names of the people that died for our country.
Now it was time for the museums! There are some amazing museums in Washington D.C. The first one we went was the Newseum. It was a great place about how reporters covered stories and it had the things and people they covered from many, many years ago, to very recently. The most moving thing there was the section about 9/11. There was a piece of art made of the metals and ruble from Ground Zero. There were so many news papers and pictures around it on this awful event. I also was a movie on 9/11 but it was about the reporters there and there real footage and live accounts of what they saw there. It also talked about people running for their lives and people jumping from the Twin Towers, all caught on tape. We had a pizza lunch at the Newseum and went on a Capitol tour. The Capitol was beautiful with all the nice stone and the detail, but inside was even better. There was marble everywhere with statues. The tour started with a movie about our history of government going all the way back to when our country was founded. The main room, which is also the very center of the city, was absolutely stunning. There was a painting at the top in memory of George Washington, and the ceiling was somewhere around 9 million pounds, made from cast iron. There was a ring of metal engravings around the ceiling as well starting at Christopher Columbus and ending with the Wright Brothers. While in the capitol we saw the old Supreme Court room and the place where John Adams desk was. We also saw a piece of Vermont at the capital because there was a statue of Ethan Allen. One very cool thing we saw was the footprints of the “Demon Cat.” There is a myth that a black cat from when the capital was first built still roams the halls but is only seen when something terrible is going to happen. The footprints are sent in stone very lightly, but visible and you can feel them. They are only in one spot though, they start and end mysteriously.
Later we went some of the Smithsonian. We went to the Museum of American History and the Air and Space Museum. They were both very cool. Dinner came next at the Grand Station and we met up with our tour guide John again. While on tour with him we saw the current Supreme Court and the Library of Congress, as well as the Marine Corps Memorial and Kennedy Center. The last thing we did was see the Air Force Memorial that was very nice. It was so tall! It is about 10:30 now and I am ready for bed! These two days have been so great. I am glad I had this experience!
-Kara
