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Woot! Our first touristy day!

Well, we didn’t want to overdo it on the first day, so… we slept in… sorta.
We woke up by 9:30 DC time, but to us it was only 8:30.  We didn’t leave the hotel until a bit after 11.  By 11:45 we were inside our first stop, the Natural History Museum.  We spent several hours there… Lots to see! Michelle got to walk through it last year, but this year we wanted to check out everything together.  Wow… too many things to see!  Anyway… we left at about 3:45 so we could make it to our next stop, the Washington Monument.  What an impressive site walking up to the base of the monument! 

I have a bit of a bone to pick here…  I know security needs to exist for many reasons, and I guess when you consider the straight shot view you have of the White House from the top of the monument, it makes sense to take precautions… but… come on!!!! We went through tighter security than we did getting on the airplane!  Once we were through security, we were told to sit down and wait for the elevator.  When the elevator arrived, we were herded in like cattle by the security ppl…  Only after we were in the elevator and as the doors are closing, so you see a really nice looking statue of our founding father, the person who is supposed to be the namesake of this monument.  Because of security, we were not even allowed to look at this statue!

Once we are at the top, wow!  What a view!  There are windows looking out in all four directions.  The visibility was great, the windows could have used a cleaning, tho! (pictures coming soon) 
You have to walk down a single flight of stairs to wait for the elevator going down, and this area was supposed to contain a gift shop, all i saw was a lady sitting in a broom closet with a cash register and some very small trinkets behind her…  I don’t think she even noticed the people walking past…  This level had some paragraphs and quotes on pictures of Washington;  the kinds of things that you would expect to see here, but it just seemed to be lacking the grandure i was expecting.  That, and the “these upgrades and enhancements graciously provide by Target Stores” signs really got my panties in a bunch…

After a few minutes wait, we are all herded back into the elevator, and are told that we will get to see some of the engraved stones that are on the inside walls of the monument.  Appearantly you cannot see all of them from the elevator, and the only way to see them is to take the stairs down.  Only, you aren’t allowed to do that not on this trip.  Everyday @ 10 am and 12 pm, park rangers (security guards) escort a group down the stairs…  After viewing the security from this cattle drive, I can only imagine that you aren’t given much time to appreciate the great detail in all the stonework on that trip, either.  Anyway, on the plus side (woot, technology), the elevator seemed to make use of a “smart glass” when we got to a level where there was an engraved stone, the glass turned from opaque to translucent.  I have seen demos of this tech on TV, but it was very cool to see up close!  The elevator didn’t actually stop so we could see these stones, it kind of just slowed down.  Oh, and there were things to see out both sides of the elevator… But that didn’t matter either, because we were packed in there so tight, i saw one little girl climb into a sardine can.

Anyway, my rant is over.  I did have a good day.  We did get to see some great things, we got some great pictures, and we got in some exercise.  We also found a Chili’s for supper!  We planned to go swimming this evening, but couldn’t because of a lightning storm…  Oh, look, another silver lining… at least we didn’t get rained on!  So Michelle and I settled in and watched “Waiting” what a great movie! lol

Later!