Washington DC

After flying all night on a red eye into Virginia on the 12th, then sleeping the day away, Colby and I woke up the next day to go on a little road trip.  First we hit Washington DC.  

We had reservations to take a tour of the capitol building.  But after going the wrong way on the metro...

then getting off at the wrong stop after going the right way (thanks to the lady in the elevator who gave us those directions), running around asking the crossing guards for directions to the capitol who had no clue where it was (if you are a policeman working for the government, shouldn't you know where the capitol building is?),  then waiting in line for security, we missed our tour by about 40 min, and the last tour by about 10.
So, we walked the tunnel over to the library of congress. 

All the architecture was beautiful!  Please excuse all the pics of me, Colby wouldn't let me have the camera

Then took pictures outside the capitol

Well tried to anyway.  We're glad we went all the way to DC to have a picture in front of a gold X-terra and a bunch of black cars!
We then made the very LONG walk down to the Holocaust museum... to be told we missed the last tour by 10 minutes.   Oh well, at least we could enjoy all the monuments nearby.  Those thankfully don't have time limits

We then made the trek over to Arlington cemetery.  Guess what?... Yup you guessed it... they closed 10 minutes before.  Darn the luck.  So after a long day of tromping around from one end of DC to other, we crashed.
The next day we were much more successful.  It hit us, we had metro tickets, and they stopped every so often.  So instead of wasting time walking everywhere, we could actually use our metro cards!  Brilliant.  We started the day out bright and early to wait in line to get tickets to everything we wanted to hit that day.  Splitting up I was able to get tickets for the Washington monument, Colby for the Holocaust museum, then later met Colby for a capitol tour and Colby even scored some tickets to see where money is made.  These people hold millions of dollars in their hands everyday like it is no big deal!

sporting our stylish tour head phones

look at that, even Brigham Young made it to our nation's capitol

Colby pretty excited to see a...

Exact replica of the Lady of Liberty?  (Not the statue of liberty)  She stands this tall on top of the capitol

We tried for capitol picture #2....

  This time we got a little bit more, but the lady taking it decided the ground was better than getting the whole top of the building:) 

We then got to go up the Washington Monument

Right before going up the elevators.  I've decided George Washington is my favorite president

 finally, a full picture of the capitol!  Too bad we're not in it

Lastly we went to the Holocaust museum.   I don't know why, call me demented, but the Holocaust, and Hitler are so interesting to me.   I guess it boggles my mind how one person could gain so much power and cause so many to become corrupt and be so cruel.  Anyway, it's a self guided tour and I was eating it up, reading EVERY word.  Well, that is until a man comes in and says to hurry because there is only 30 min left before closing and we're not even HALF way, we had 3 more floors!!!  So to say the least I had to book it through the rest, briefly glancing, getting a brief idea of each floor.  If I could, I would have spent a half day there.

We had successfully made it to everything we wanted to, and wanted to go just get a peek of the White House.  Well it started pouring, and I mean POURing!  And crazy lightning.

So we stopped to listen to Colby talk with Michelle and Barrak to wait for the storm to roll over

Then decided to brave the storm 

 Such a pretty place, love old houses!

The next morning we went to Arlington Cemetery before leaving for Philly.  It was such a neat place.  Colby kept saying what a cool feeling there was there.  I'm so grateful for all the sacrifice given so I could live in this beautiful free land.