D.C. Day 1

Our days have been very packed lately, thus my being a day behind.

So, yesterday we headed into D.C. for the first time. After looking at the cost of taking the metro we decided to try driving in. This worked okay at first; we made good time, but then we got into the city itself. Stoplights and traffic slowed our progress to a crawl and it took us about 20 minutes just to get to a parking garage (whereas the rest of the drive only took 30 minutes). Once we were parked we headed for the trolley tour station. The "trolley" (they're really just buses that look like trolleys) tour was a hop on, hop off thing, so that was nice. We decided to see some of the farther out things on this day. So we took the trolley to the National Zoo first. This actually ended up being a poor use of time. We have seen zoos before, and the only things that this zoo had that most others didn't was Pandas and lion cubs. So we did see those, but we went through the zoo pretty fast. Here are some pictures of the zoo.

We then had lunch at another new place. Chipotle Mexican Grill. I had been there on the Student Action Team and thus knew that it was pretty good. Everyone liked the food and it was right next to our trolley stop.
Next we went to the National Cathedral. This was the first time that I can remember seeing a cathedral and it was amazing. The structure itself was huge and just to see all the stained glass and the height of the ceiling in there was amazing.
Here are a couple pictures from there.

This is actually a stained glass window of space. It has a rock from the moon in that little white circle in the center of the big red one.  The rest of the windows had Christian themes like most stained glass windows.

Then we continued on our tour. We drove past Emabassy Row and saw well over a dozen embassies. When we got back to the welcome center we went straight from one trolley to the next. The trolleys have two main routes, we had gone on one and were now transferring to the other. We were doing this in an effort to get to their Arlington bus. The Arlington bus is really just a shuttle back and forth from the Lincoln Memorial to Arlington National Cemetery. Unfortunately, due to extremely heavy traffic and a crew change it seemed to take forever to get to the Lincoln Memorial. Also, the new narrator who came on at the crew change wasn't very exciting. Our other drivers/narrators had all been very fun to listen to, but this one was apparently in training and he wasn't very engaging. By the time we got the Lincoln Memorial we were basically out of time to see Arlington and still catch the last bus back. So we decided instead to see the Lincoln Memorial and then head back to the parking garage. We visited the Lincoln Memorial very quickly. We all enjoyed the memorial. It was very cool inside and Lincoln did have to face some very difficult times so that gave the site its importance. Lincoln may be a controversial figure in the eyes of some (a topic I have not finished researching by the way) but still it seems that you are standing somewhere important inside the memorial.
Here are some pictures of the Lincoln Memorial.

We then went back to the trolley stop, picked up another trolley, and headed back to the welcome center which was close to our parking garage. This time the driver/narrator was very fun and really helped us cheer up, especially because Jacob and Alyssa sat up front and he made them and another boy up there his "semi-conductors". We then made our way to the parking garage, fought through the horrendous traffic, and finally made it back to the hotel.

Overall this day was rather dissappointing. We had lost a couple hours on the trolley trying to get to Lincoln. The crowds were huge, and the traffic was horrendous. But we learned some important lessons. One: things take longer than you would think; two: traffic and crowds will be larger than you think, three: get there earlier so that you're there when they open and thus you have more time. The next day, which would be today, we took the metro in order to try that out.  Today (Tuesday) was a lot better, but that post will have to wait until tomorrow.

Quote: "Now we know why they said to take the metro." --Dad, as he fought off the crazy drivers in long lines of traffic.