The monuments are whispering your name

That's a line from a song by Matt Wertz, one of my favorite artists. The song is "Capitol City" and I've been humming it a lot the past two days. I've also been picturing lots of clips from "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington"!

The last two days have been jam-packed. Yesterday we started out the day intending to go to the Capitol, the Library of Congress, Union Station, the National Archives and all the memorials. We started the day by walking to first the Washington Monument and then the Capitol to get tickets. We then headed towards Union Station for breakfast, but encountered some pretty heavy rain. We ducked into this little straw-bale house at the Botanical Gardens to wait it out. Here was our view of the Capitol...

While waiting it out, we decided to change our plan, due to the weather and opted to walk over to the National Gallery of Art.

We've still only seen the East building of the Art Museum. If time allows, we'll go back to see the West building. Jackson Pollock is all well and good, but I want to see some Monets.

From the Art Museum, we walked over to the Holocaust Museum. We fully intended to go to the Washington Monument afterwards, but we spent three hours in the Holocaust Museum and missed our ticket time. It was worth it, though - the Holocaust Museum was incredibly moving and thought-provoking. There was no photography allowed, though, so I have no pictures.

Day Two - The rain let up a little bit today, so we decided to follow through on our original plan for yesterday. That meant a LOT of walking. According to Google Maps, we walked about 12.9 miles today, and that's not even counting the walking we did inside buildings.

We overslept a little this morning and missed the window of opportunity for Capitol tickets. That's okay...tomorrow is another day! We did manage to see the Library of Congress...

...the Supreme Court...

...Union Station for lunch...

...the National Archives...

...the Washington Monument...

...the World War II Memorial...

...and the Lincoln Memorial.

It's been a long day and our feet are aching, but we'll be back at it again tomorrow. The plan is to go to the Capitol first thing in the morning and then drive to Charlottseville to visit Monticello. Drive...yay. That means a little rest for the weary feet!

If you're looking for a few more pictures, check out my Facebook albums. They're at:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=53678&l=e6d07&id=778399337 and http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=53749&l=5ff9e&id=778399337.