D.C. - Day 3

Tuesday we had another early-ish morning to get to Ford's Theater (where Lincoln was shot). Again, another great museum (located in the basement of the theater) all about Lincoln's life, presidency, and the day leading up to the assassination. The theater itself is very well preserved and still puts on shows! Pretty cool. Across the street they've turned the house Lincoln was taken to and eventually died in, into a museum of sorts as well. They've restored it and included an additional museum all about the aftermath of his death. Like I keep saying, it's all vey well done. We probably spent another 2-3 hours there.

After Ford's theater we took a walk around the White House. It's weird, on the South Lawn (the cool side of the house) you can't get close at all! On the suckier North side you can get really close. Kind of a bummer for pictures. Security is insane too! So many guards with BIG guns, motion sensors and cameras and stuff. Honestly though, it's one of the less impressive buildings in DC.

At 1 pm we had a scheduled tour at the Pentagon, so we made our way there, got through security, and just chilled for 15-20 minutes until it started. This was by far the lamest part of our trip. Kind of weird too. The lovely enlistees they have do the tour have to memorize a 32 page script word for word. So it's preeeeetty dry. The head "tour guide" has to walk backwards facing the group as he gives the speech. I'm guessing it's for security purposes? They have you walk pretty much non-stop, so you don't really have time to look at any of the stuff he's talking about. PLUS it's all about the military with model airplane and stuff set up in dioramas, and less about the Pentagon, which is what we were most interested in.

All in all pretty lame. The coolest part is just being able to say you've been inside the Pentagon. Oh, that and seeing John freak out at all the high ranking officers everywhere in the building haha.

After the tour we decided to go to the near by city of Rosslyn for some food. We ate at a yummy greek place called Roti, before making our way to the Marine Memorial. This is the famous statue of the 4 guys putting up the flag during the battle of Iwo Jima in WWII. It is HUGE! Another favorite for sure.

The memorial is located right on the outskirts of Arlington National Cemetery, which was our next stop.

We had a lovely walk through the cemetery as we made our way to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. That place is so huge and so special. It was definitely one of my favorite things we did (I keep saying this huh?). The changing of the guard at the Tomb is phenomenal! They do it every 30 minutes and we stayed to watch them change twice. They're so precise and synchronized in their movements. It blows my mind. There's no denying the special feeling you get there as well.

As we were walking out of the cemetery we made little pit stops to other neat attractions like the historic house where General Lee (confederate Army general) lived for 30-ish years prior to the Civil War and JFK's memorial and tomb. Both really cool.

We were pretty pooped at this point, so it was back to the hotel for a quick nappie before getting dinner at a delicious burger joint. After dinner we decided to walk a loop containing the remainder of the big monuments we didn't see on Monday night's tour. We saw the Koren War memorial, MLK memorial, FDR memorial, and finished off with the Jefferson Memorial.

Funny story: as we were going through these memorials, around FDR was totally packed with people all playing Pokemon Go. Sooo annoying!

The Jefferson memorial is a HUGE one and really cool. It probably comes in 2nd to Lincoln. It's kind of out of the way though, not a part of the Mall, so doesn't get as much notoriety or traffic. We loved it. We were also VERY tired by this point and you can definitely tell in the pics we took haha! I think we ended up walking about 12 miles that day.