Washington, DC - Day 2

Well, we can't say we walked as far as yesterday, but we did seem to try.

Today was just a two stopper, Arlington National Cemetery and the Museum of Natural History. We also found out other information regarding getting to tour the White House.  I Googled it, and for a person(s) from a foreign country to get a tour of the White House, you must contact your embassy and have it arranged through them.  We were also told it must be done six-months in advance!  Here is the information link http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/tours-and-events.

Albert Einstien

We started off again from Union Station and rode out to a transfer point, transferred busses and were taken out to Arlington Cemetery.  During the drive we went by a statue of Albert Einstein taking it easy :).

Once at the cemetery we decided to walk to President's Kennedy's grave which also included the graves of Jacqueline, and an infant son.  There was also a place reserved for their daughter.  There were many people there but very quiet and reverent.  I could not believe the number of graves, Arlington Cemetery is the final resting place for over 400,000 active duty service members, veterans and their families.

Rows Upon Rows

We also went to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the tomb is guarded by a soldier that walks slowly back and forth (24 hours a day, 365 days a year) in all kinds of weather.  The guard repeats the process approximately every minute and there is a changing of the guard every hour on the hour.

Walking back to the Arlington Cemetery Visitors Centre was a little easier as it was all down hill.  Arlington Cemetery is built on a hill so any walking takes on a little challenge after a while.

We got back on the bus which then took us past the Pentagon and the 9/11 memorial where the airplane ploughed into the building.  Unfortunately no pictures are allowed to be taken of the Pentagon, even just driving by in a tour bus!  So we didn't.

45.52 Carats

After lunch we arrived at the Museum of Natural History, we had about 3 hours to tour this museum, well that was no where near enough time (see our message about visiting any of the museums at the end of this blog).  The girl in behind the information desk sort of looked at us like "not a chance".  We focused on the human species and where we evolved from, we then saw an area focused on minerals, crystals and gems (including the actual Hope Diamond) and finished the visit with a fairly new exposition on pictures of the animal world - wonderful!

The population of the world at 2:20 PM on October 28th, 2014.

A note about visiting the Museums of Washington, DC, we found that you probably need most of a day for each museum.  They are huge and have so much information there is no way to be able to give them the attention you want in anything less than 4 to 6 hours.  If we come back we would do the museum tours a little differently.  However, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.