A Whirlwind Tour of Washington D.C.

We had not planned to visit Washington while Hubby was working in Pennsylvania.  We had stayed there for a week, doing the tourist thing, when our children were younger and figured we had seen enough.

However, a couple weeks ago our daughter, Dawn, was sent to Washington D.C. by her employer to attend the USO Gala.  She was able to stay over an extra day to spend some quality time with us!

We arrived Friday afternoon in time to help her get ready for the ball.  (I did her hair.)  There was dinner, dancing, entertainment by Kellie Pickler, and rubbing elbows with some important generals.  We didn't get to see it though!

We picked Dawn up at her hotel the next morning, moved her to our hotel near China Town, and set off on foot to see the sights.

With the exception of the International Spy Museum (I'll blog about that later), we were mostly after photos.

There was the church Abraham Lincoln attended...........

..........monuments to our first President.........

.........and a monument to our third President (Thomas Jefferson - in case you don't remember).

The White House was unreachable, unless you made arrangements through your congressman in advance.  Fortunately, we had toured it on our earlier trip to Washington.

There are still plenty of demonstrators making their opinions heard in the street in front of the White House.

We finally made it to the Washington Monument after hoofing it around town for about seven miles - according to Dawn's phone app.

That's where we decided to use a tour bus to finish seeing the sights - eventually getting us near our hotel again!

We were able to get on and off the bus to get pictures of the Vietnam War Memorial, otherwise known as The Wall.

Nearby the Wall is the Lincoln Monument - crowded with other people seeing the sights.

It's just as inspiring today as it was when I was here years ago.

At this point, Father and daughter were ready to call it a day!

A couple more photo ops and we re-boarded the bus as it headed in the direction of our hotel.

I enjoyed our quick visit to D.C. but I sure wouldn't want to live there!  The next day we headed for the quieter countryside of George Washington's Mount Vernon, Virginia.