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To wrap up this brief tour of Washington D.C. (which I pre-blogged to cover for me while I’m on a trip to Seattle) we end with a picture of the back of the White House. We met some nice guys from Norway at this location, not realizing that we would be visiting Norway less than a month later.
We had only a morning to explore D.C. before we headed back to the airport to catch our flight to Copenhagen (the flight we missed the day before which caused our brief stay in the nation’s capital). This was actually a good thing as we missed the crowds and heat of the day. We didn’t miss the morning commute into D.C. from Virginia though.
Today’s picture is from the Iwo Jima Memorial in yesterday’s entry. If you are viewing the front of the monument you need only turn around to see the above view of traffic gridlock on a weekday morning. The Capitol Building and Washington Monument can clearly be seen in the background.
With all of the images on TV these days of Washington D.C. I figured I’d share a few of my own from this past summer.
Today’s photograph is from inside the taxi cab that took us from our hotel in Virginia to D.C. I actually have several pictures of the Iwo Jima Memorial (Marine Corps War Memorial) that are much better than this, but I like this one for the no left turn sign. I also like this picture because it shows how huge this monument is. I always imagined it as being life size since pictures usually show only the monument with no frame of reference. The figures aren’t six feet in height though. They are more than 5 times larger than life as you can see by comparing them to the two people on the right of the base.
I have a few decent pictures from our day in Washington D.C. this past summer that I’ll put up here from time to time. The above is of the magnificent sunset from our hotel room. We didn’t realize until the next day (since it was an unplanned trip that happened only because we missed our flight to Copenhagen) that we weren’t really in Washington D.C. at all. We were in Virginia.
Instead of just dumping us at the Capitol Hill Building, our driver gave us a tour of the Iwo Jima memorial, Arlington Cemetery, the Pentagon, and told us what else to see. He even let us get out and take pictures at the Iwo Jima statue. It was much bigger than I had expected. (We recently watched Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, the latter being much better, so we had some idea what this place was about.) There was nobody at the monument when we got there. As we pulled away a few tour buses showed up with masses of people.
Our driver dropped us off at the Lincoln Memorial. Some workers were blasting high pressure water through fire hoses up Lincoln’s nose when we first got up the stairs.
Next we walked through the Vietnam Memorial Wall area on our way to the White House.
At the White House we made friends with some guys from Norway who gave us some tips about Copenhagen and encouraged us to visit their country too.
From the White House we headed by the Washington Monument and ended up in the Smithsonian Castle. Nothing much to see in there (although the exterior was cool) so we made our way to an art museum with lockers (and an Andy Warhol) to finally put down our luggage for a while.
We finished off our time in DC at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum and the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian before heading to the airport to finally go to Denmark.
… in Washington D.C. As inevitably happens when you are traveling long distances, things don’t go as planned and you end up stranded somewhere.
The above picture is of our plane from Portland, Oregon to Washington D.C. From our nation’s capital we were scheduled to connect on a flight to Copenhagen. However, even though we were there and ready 30 minutes before our scheduled departure, and our plane was there and ready 30 minutes before our scheduled departure, the crew was required by some regulations to get some more beauty sleep. (By the looks of this crew, the beauty sleep didn’t help. 😉 ) Therefore, we were 2 and a half hours behind schedule in Portland and subsequently missed our flight to Copenhagen.
Ryan used the extra time to get some shut eye.
Ellie used it to send email to her friends.
Upon arrival in DC, United Airlines gave us a room at the Hyatt Hotel, $60 in meal money, $60 in cab fare, $400 in travel vouchers on future flights, and 4 bags of toiletries. Since we are going to be in Copenhagen for over 5 weeks anyway, missing a day isn’t the end of the world. I’ve never toured our nation’s capital either so DC will now be one place we don’t have to take a vacation to in the future.
In the airport I saw Pat Robertson. He was talking with his traveling companions as I passed him, and I heard him say something about Jimmy Carter. Airports are weird.
I’ll save most of our DC adventures for tomorrow’s blog entry, but one thing I found very curious at the airport I will share today. The Dulles airport in DC must be the most poorly designed facility on the planet. The terminals are long, long hallways with no moving walkways. It takes forever to get from one end to the other. But that isn’t the worst of it. The worst is that the terminals are not connected. To get from one terminal to another you must ride on a shuttle bus (of sorts). The shuttle buses look like crazy, military carriers from a low budget sci-fi movie.
That still isn’t the worst of it. To get from one terminal to another these shuttle buses must cross the runways and taxiing areas of the airplanes. So the airplanes and shuttle buses are trying to drive around each other on the runways causing all sorts of delays for those trying to get from one terminal to another and for those on planes trying to get to gates. (Our plane had to wait after landing about 15 minutes before it could creep up to a gate and let us off.) It felt like we were in some sort of bizarro world that only some mindless scoundrels would have created. But then again, we are talking about Washington D.C…