Wednesday, January 10, 2007

A Sunny Saturday in D.C.

Well, I'm catching up a bit here . . . Saturday was a beautiful day with a high of around 70 degrees. We didn't have any big plans for the day (well, other than me taking Nathan and Luke to the library, LOL), and we were just lazing around in the morning when Elizabeth called. They were at the Washington Monument and wanted to know if we wanted them to get tickets for us. For those of you who haven't visited D.C. for awhile, you have to have a free ticket to go up to the top of the Monument. You have to get there early in the day, and then you get tickets for a certain half hour block of time, which is when you can show up. We, being the "lazy and basically not motivated to go anywhere but especially not downtown early" type of people that we are had never even considered going up in the Monument.

But here was our golden opportunity, and on a beautiful day to boot! So we told Elizabeth yes, and she got us tickets for 1:00. The big boys and I rushed off to the library, we all grabbed a quick bite to eat, and we drove downtown. By this time it was pretty crowded with walkers, joggers, people with strollers, people with dogs--tons of people! But we found a parking place and got to the Monument at about 1:15. The ranger asked who was pregnant, so another woman and I got special treatment, LOL. We got to go in the side door and not go through the security screening. Ahh, the perks and privileges of pregnancy. Then we zoomed up to the top in the elevator. No more climbing of all those stairs! They closed those awhile back.

It was really neat to look out all the windows and see the birds-eye view of the city. The boys all really enjoyed it. Anna was riding in her backpack, and she enjoyed it as long as Bob was moving, LOL.

When we were done and back on the ground, it was too nice of a day just to walk straight back to the car, so we meandered over to the World War II Memorial. We hadn't been to see it yet either, and I really liked it. I know there was criticism when it opened, but I liked all the wreaths and the quotes. Very moving. It was a good trip downtown, and it reminded me that I really want us to go to the National gallery of Art sometime before the baby is born! Maybe one day when Bob takes leave . . .

1 comment:

Dy said...

Wow, what a wonderful surprise trip! We have no early bird friends, so we never made it up the monument while we were there. Maybe someday. ;-)

Dy