After a l-o-n-g walk to the Capitol building, we went to the Minnesota Representative’s office, who had arranged our tour, to meet with our tour guide. There were 6 of us and we met up with another seven traveling from Minnesota for the tour with our guide.
There were hundreds of others touring as well, being led by the various guides from their own respective state’s Representative’s office. We were taken through some of the older rooms where the Senate and House of Representatives had met years ago and to the rotunda with its huge dome.
The rooms were very ornate with marble columns supporting the ceilings and upper floors; the rotunda was beautiful with huge historical paintings lining the walls, sparkling crystal chandeliers and beautiful marble floors with various inlaid patterns. We also saw where the original Supreme Court had met before they had their own building.
This was lined with rich mahogany wood and was beautiful. We were taken into the meeting chamber of the House of Representatives where they were supposedly in session. I say supposedly because there may have been a couple of them in there, and some one from California was petitioning for a water shed issue, but there was hardly anyone there except for the audience in the balcony (us and the other tours). We were later told that is the norm. Most of them only show up if there is something directly concerning them or to vote. After we left there, we went to the U.S. Botanical Garden which was beautiful and a welcome break from the cold and rain we had been experiencing all day. They house over 60,000 plants ranging from gorgeous orchids to cactus and everything in between. We then rode the trolley again through more historical areas, and then went to eat at the Hard Rock Café. After that we parted from Lora and Darrell and headed to the Metro. By the time we rode the Metro and bus, it was about 9:00 when we got back to the campground. We were both too exhausted to write this blog.
Today, Friday, we left the campground about 8:00 to meet with Lora’s family at their hotel prior to our White House tour. We arrived for the tour about 11:00 – we were supposed to be there by 11:15 for our 11:30 tour. The line was out the drive and curved along the fence down the street. We waited in the chilly drizzling rain with restless and tired boys till a little after 12:00 when our group (probably 100 or so scheduled for 11:30) was finally allowed to go in. Once inside, it was a self guided tour where everyone was allowed to proceed at their own pace. We were allowed to go through the east wing area which had each room roped off for a walkway. We went through a long glassed in hallway, called the Colonnade, with numerous photo displays of various former Presidents and of course the current President and his family. We saw the Green Room, the Blue Room and the Red Room. We also saw the State Dining Room and various other impressive rooms with historical antiques on display. As we were exiting the White House, Kyle (age 9) expressed his view, “We waited all that time for this?”
After lunch we finished up the day at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum. The Air & Space Museum is the most visited museum in the complex. They had displays of all kinds of planes and space craft. We spent about 2 hours looking at the various displays, and really only scratched the surface. Kyle and Alec (and us) really enjoyed looking at all the aircraft up close. With the museum closing at 5:30, we made one last stop at the gift shop before it closed and headed our separate ways. We had a good time with Lora and family, and considered it a real treat to meet them in DC.
We had a question on the posting times listed on our blog. The server is located in California and the time posted will always be Pacific time. In this case, the time is listed as 3 hours earlier than the Eastern time we are posting the blog. Also, I know the photos are small, but if you double click on a photo you should pull up a larger size on your computer.
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