Washington DC - Day 3

Day three of the trip, Tuesday, started very early for me! I wanted to get tickets to go to the top of the Washington Monument. I tried to reserve them online, but they were sold out, and the only other way was to get same day tickets starting at 8:30 AM. But the tour guide said that the line forms as early as 7 AM during tourist season, so I left the hotel room at 6:45 for a brisk mile and a half walk to the monument. I arrived a little after 7 and there were about 8 people in front of me. And then I had 90 minutes to kill just standing in line talking to other tourists. But it was a beautiful morning and I didn't care. I got tickets for an 11 AM tour, so I had time to get back to the hotel and rally the troops.

Yep, all the way to the top to look out those itty bitty windows.

The view to the west, the Lincoln Memorial, the reflecting pool, and the World War 2 memorial in the foreground.

The view to the east, to the Capitol and all the museums:

The view to the north to the White House.

The southern view of the Jefferson Memorial. The Pentagon is just across the river and to the right. From this vantage, it was quite scary to see how close the plane was to everything else on Sept 11, 2001.

At the top of the momument:

Chillin' outside the monument after the tour.

We went to the Reagan Commerce Building's food court for lunch. Crazy is an understatement. Afterward, we headed across the National Mall to get to the Smithsonian Castle.

We saw some other folks taking funny photos like this, so EJ and I just had to try it:

There's a beautiful old carousel in front of the Smithsonian Castle. Sophie had to ride the shiny blue dragon.

The next stop was the Air and Space Museum, but on the way, EJ went inside the Hirschorn's building to check out the fountain.

At the Air and Space Museum, we saw the Wright Brothers plane...

And Amelia Earhart's plane...

and the cockpit of a jetliner:

EJ competed in a paper airplane contest against much older kids and finished in 2nd or 3rd place!

Sophie? She won't remember anything after the carousel, because she crashed hard!!!