Washington DC Trip: Day 5

Today Jason and I went to the Mall! This isn't just any ordinary mall filled with shops, but the Mall we are talking about is an area in DC that contains just about everything you want to see your first trip there. We started out going and seeing the Capitol building and then just kept heading West from there. We eventually ran into the part of the Mall where all of the Smithsonians are located. As much as we would have enjoyed visiting all of the museums there we knew we only scheduled one day to visit the most important ones. I was excited to show Jason my 3 favorite museums that I saw right after I graduated high school. Our first one that we explored was the American History Smithsonian. The highlight in this museum has to be the original flag that is mentioned in the Star Spangled Banner.


We spent a couple of hours in that museum and then we were ready to move on. We started walking towards the next museum but stopped to take a picture with the Smithsonian Castle. It is mainly used as a visitors center but is so gorgeous that I would consider it a castle. I love the red color of the building.

Here we are outside the Smithsonian Castle.


The next Smithsonian that we wanted to visit was the Air and Space Museum. I knew Jason would spend most of the time looking up because they have displayed so many famous flying machines up high so you can see them. Inside the museum it goes through the history of flying from showing you some of the original planes by the Wright Brothers to the Apollo 11 capsule and beyond.

Here is a view of us standing below the main gallery in the Air and Space Smithsonian. Right behind Jason is Chuck Yager's plane that first broke the sound barrier and behind my head is "SpaceshipOne," which was the first commercial spacecraft to enter space.

Our final Smithsonian for the day was the Natural History museum, which is another favorite. It has everything about our planet Earth there, including amazing collections of rocks, plants, animals, and everything else in-between.

Just those three museums took the whole morning and most of the afternoon to go through, and we still wanted to see more of them! We just kept saying that we will have to come back to DC and see them again! We continued down the Mall and eventually ran into the Washington Monument. We looked to the right (North) and could see the White House and then looked left (South) and could see the Jefferson Memorial we saw on Day 2. Sticking to the main course we continued West. We came across the WWII memorial, which was brand new when I came here in 2004. We arrived here right around sunset and it was such a nice evening that we didn't want to leave.

Here we are by the WWII Memorial.

You'd think that we would have been done by that point, but not yet! We held hands and talked as we continued down the Mall to see one more war memorial: the Vietnam War Memorial. It was dark by this point, especially after I had to take a few minutes to go and chase fireflies. It was our first encounter with fireflies and I just loved watching them. I could do that everyday and never get sick of them!

A picture of the Vietnam Memorial. It is one of the more simpler memorials in that it is a long, black wall with all of the names of the great men and women that sacrificed their lives in the war. I like to read through the names and imagine that person and what they were like and how this memorial doesn't do anything to detract from their names or honor. It is beautiful!

Finally, the end of the Mall! We walked several miles for over 12 hours to end up at one of my favorite memorials in the entire world! The Lincoln Memorial. The last time I came out here I saw this during the daytime, which was amazing, of course! But lately I am finding that certain iconic sites are just better at night! The Lincoln memorial was lit up and was just glowing in the evening sky. We sat on the steps looking up at Abe, admiring the beauty of the memorial. By this point we were about ready to pass out on those steps so we went back to the hotel and called it a great day!