A Day in D.C.

Growing up in Virginia, I've always taken for granted how close I live to our nation's capital.

I have family in that area, so the Washington Monument has always been a familiar sight, and I was a little surprised when Ryan said he'd never been.

So on Saturday morning when he suggested we go, I jumped at the chance!

Well, what was supposed to only be a two-and-a-half hour drive took nearly five hours!

I don't even want to talk about Virginia drivers.

So, after much swearing and braking and talking about turning around, we finally made it to D.C. right around 5 PM, which turned out to be pretty lucky, because we got there right after a nasty rain storm cleared up.

We're definitely planning on taking an entire weekend to go and check out more of the city, but we had just enough time to walk the National Mall and snap some pictures.

Of course we had to take "tacky tourist" photos at the base of the monument!

It was still too humid out to worry about looking cute.

Reppin' the Navy, of course!

We both really liked the World War II Memorial; it's so intricate, I can't even imagine how much went in to designing and executing every last detail.

My favorite part of it was the "Price of Freedom," which had one bronze star for every one hundred American Servicemembers who died or are still missing - there are over 4,000 stars.

Little did we know, the Reflecting Pool has been torn up and is being completely redone.  So we got to walk around "The Giant Reflecting Mud Puddle."

The Lincoln Memorial was by far the busiest of the memorials.  It was literally crawling with people.  But nonetheless it was still amazing - I got a little choked up reading the Gettysburg Address.  There's a small exhibit under the Memorial that has more of Lincoln's words - even his personal correspondence was eloquent!

Our favorite by far was the Korean War Memorial.  It was a little more removed from the larger memorials and felt very serene.

Our camera died sometime around dinner, but Ryan managed to get a picture of the White House with his phone.  He's still fully convinced he saw the Obamas out on the balcony. 

What about you? Ever been to D.C.?  What are your favorite parts?