I really love Washington D.C. because it really has a lot of character. Given more time, I'd love to visit all the museums and monuments. But due to time constraint we only managed to cover a short list of monuments and a museum. First location for that day was the National Mall. National Mall sounds like a shopping mall but it's actually a large park consisting of monuments and memorials.
Korean War Veterans Memorial: There are a total of 19 larger-than-life statues depicting different branches of the armed forces. The granite wall to the left of the first picture would reflect the image of the 19 statues, especially when it's really sunny so there will be 38 soldiers altogether. This represents the 38th parallel, i.e. the boundary between North and South Korea. Pretty interesting!
Next was the Vietnam War Veterans Memorial. Pretty sad to look through the list of names, especially those that had a symbol next to their name indicating that their body/whereabouts were unknown (MIA).
So many pictures of the park and trees because it's just really so beautiful and serene.
The Lincoln Memorial. Abraham Lincoln is probably one of the first President of United States that I got to know about when I was younger. I guess it must have been because of his iconic beard and top hat.
The Washington Monument that commemorates George Washington.
Love the colors of autumn/winter (:
The Capitol Building
This next icon needs no introduction - The White House!
So the sun was fast setting (at about 4pm-ish) and we rushed to The National Museum of Natural History! We were really excited to visit this museum and it was not in our tour itinerary, but our tour guide helped us squeeze this in. But because the museum closes at 5.30pm, we had less than an hour in there.
Some of the exhibits looked pretty familiar, and it's because this museum inspired the movie "Night at the Museum". The most familiar character is the t-rex skeleton featured in the picture above!
On pathetic picture of me in the museum! I had predicted that the museum will be heated, so I left my coat in the bus. But boy! Was I freezing during the long walk from the bus to the museum.
Love how the exhibits looked so real and life-sized. From the big....
...down to the small.
Dinosaur fossil lab
I think these are leaf insects mating? :/
Because we had only an hour in there, my sisters and I practically jogged from one exhibit hall to another, skimming through all the exhibits as fast as we could. We completed the whole museum in record time! Given the time, I would wanna go back there some day to properly read the descriptions and appreciate all the exhibits.
As night fell, we made our way to the last monument, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial. Again, Thomas Jefferson was one of the Presidents. What was special about his monument was the dome-shaped ceiling, which was his trademark in all the buildings he designed.
That's all for Washington D.C.! A really quaint city with a cultural experience at every turn. Would definitely add it onto my must-visit-again list.
Next post, Hershey's Chocolate World!
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