Visiting DC - Day 1

Lindsay came into town to visit Chris and I and we all decided a spur of the moment trip to DC would be really fun.  We left early one morning and drove the four hours to our hotel right outside of the DC area.  We dropped off our things, had a quick snack and were off!  First thing we hit up was the national mall.  The mall is about 2 miles long one way so we started on one end with the state capitol and worked our way to the other end where the Lincoln Memorial was awaiting.  The weather was GORGEOUS and couldn't have been better.  Since it was a weekday, there were crowds but not the usual weekend crowds to deal with.

   
We got a chance to stop in at the Botanical Garden Conservatory which was having an orchid show.  So many beautiful flowers.  I'll try to only pick a few pictures out of the many that were taken there.

They also had a tulip garden outside with a pumphouse that we had to take some pics with. 

We walked past many of the big buildings downtown like the FBI building, the Canadian embassy, IRS building and many, many more. (There were blocks and blocks of HUGE buildings)  Plus you had all your museums interwoven in there which made for a lot of things to look at.  One of the favorite things about the museums is they're free...so in we went!  First was the Smithsonian National History museum. 

                                                               Easter Island Statue

                                                        This is for the Bello boys!

                                                 The Hope diamond is 45.52 carats total

                                                                    Meteorite

                                                Egyptian mummy.....ummm....wait......


After that we headed on up the mall to the washington monument.  Unfortunately it was closed due to some construction from an earlier earthquake so we couldn't go up to the top of it, but it was still pretty spectacular to look at. 

We kept walking till we found one of the war memorials (sorry, cant remember which one)  and by now the sun was starting to set. 

We made it to the Lincoln Memorial and the reflecting pool.  Unfortunately the reflecting pool was drained due to some more construction which we were pretty bummed about, but we did get to see the Lincoln Memorial. 

 I'm not a huge history buff or anything but it was very humbling to walk around and see all of these historical buildings in person and see the immense work and thought that went into them.  We left the Lincoln Memorial and rode the subway back to our hotel for the night.