Our second day started at Arlington Cemetary in Virginia. Talk about a moving experience!!! We were looking for a particular headstone...belonging to a young soldier I knew of, and the brother of a very dear friend of mine, Courtney. She had given me the headstone # and row #, as well as telling us he was in section 60--the Iraq section.
When we found it, I was absolutely overcome with emotion. I think that Arlington Cemetary is one of those places you can see in books and photographs, but it is NOTHING compared to what it is like in person. Not to mention, a few rows up, there was a funeral going on. The media was there and we even saw the horse-drawn carriage with a flag-covered casket, and the 21 gun salute. Before we left the cemetary, we heard the guns from another funeral.
From there, we went to the Tomb of the Unknown. It just so happened that we got there just in time for the changing of the guards.
We left Arlington, walked across the bridge over the Potomac River and into DC.
Our plans were to go to the Lincoln Memorial, but we were all so hungry. Luckily, we saw a concession stand between the Lincoln and Korean memorials. It was incredible.
Then we went to the Korean memorial and onto the Lincoln. We stood at the end of the Reflecting Pool for some quick pictures and asked a sweet Chinese woman to take our picture. She shook her head and said, "no", pointed to the girls and said "them". We didn't understand, but then a man said he would do it. After our family picture, a younger Chinese woman asked if she could have a picture with our girls. We said ok. Then, a whole group of Chinese tourists came up and asked if they could as well. It was hilarious! The younger woman kept telling us thank you. We had asked if she was visiting, and she said yes, from China. She said that they wanted pictures with our girls because they had yellow hair. Our girls thought they were celebrities!
We checked out the Lincoln Memorial and took a few more pictures of the Reflecting Pool and Washington Monument. There was this helicopter that kept flying in front of it when I was trying to get the picture. Brian kept saying, "take it!" "Take it!", but I wouldn't. Later, we were told it was the Presidential helicopter...whta a cool picture that would have been. Oh well.
We walked from there to the WWII Memorial, on down to the White House,
and then over to the Museum of American History.
However, but by the time we got to the museum, Bella had HAD IT! We had forgotten her stroller in Brad's car and she had to walk (or ride on Brian's shoulders). We looked around for a bit, but the museum was hard to navigate in, and several exhibits were closed so we hung out in the cafe with a diet coke and candy bars until we headed toward the Metro. Brad ended up picking us up downtown on his way home. We planned to hit the Museum of Air and Space the next morning before heading home.
