We had a great visit with Becca's cousins, Abby and Matty, and their folks- Michelle and Thom (Bob's brother). A highlight was Abby's concert where she did double duty- violin AND choir!
"MUST SEE" sights:
The 9/11 Pentagon Memorial. Very simple yet moving, even for kids. Becca realized that 2 of the passengers on the plane were close to her age. It really gave her pause. She stopped to pray. There are 2 guided tours via cell phone- 12 minutes and 28 (I think...). Park at the Pentagon City Mall on the Macy's side and walk through the tunnel.
We rented bikes from DC Bikeshare (lots of "bike stations" all over DC) to ride around the National Mall. We wish we would have brought bike locks.
Lincoln Memorial. HUGE! Thanks to Mrs. Wright, we spent lots of time admiring the Gettysburg Address.
Washington Monument. Can't miss it!
World War II Memorial. Beautiful. There is so much, it's hard to take it all in.
Vietnam Women's Memorial. This is a powerful sculpture that reflects so much of the important work that American women did in Vietnam.
Mount Vernon. Thanks to Aunt Michelle's suggestion, we made an afternoon trip to George Washington's home. We toured the mansion and the slave quarters. We had quite a discussion about how a person who could do so much good could also own slaves. We will be going back in September to do the NATIONAL TREASURE TOUR! We were too late to go on the tour this time. They actually filmed part of the movie here- can't wait!
Newseum- a fairly new museum that is definitely worth a visit. Tickets are good for 2 days. They have a portion of the Berlin Wall and a guard tower recreated. There are actual newspapers from the Civil War era with stories from both the Northern and Southern perspective. Becca did a news report from the White House!
Spy Museum- Becca and Abby and I slept over for "Operation Secret Slumber"! They teamed up with a Girl Scout troop from Arlington and did some secret missions which included "dead drops" and finding a Mole! She turned out to be one of the Girl Scout leaders!! We adults went on "Operation Secret Spy" (an experience created with the help of Disney operatives) while the kids were spying. We will return here too!
Things we are going back for: Library of Congress, Reflecting Pool (it was under renovation), the Women's Memorial, The Capitol Bldg., and the Supreme Court, and too many Smithsonians to count!
Parking was pretty awful, so we used a parking garage near the Newseum one day, and took the Metro in from Pentagon City Mall another day. Traffic wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, but I'm told we were just lucky!
All in all, we had a great trip!
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