Gettysburg
and Washington D.C. March 28-30
Last
Thursday, we went to the famous Gettysburg National Military Park. It took five long and boring hours to get
there. Once we arrived, my mom bought a three-hour auto tour. My favorite stop on
the our was Little Round Top. It was my favorite because there are a lot of big,
black rocks that I could climb on. We also went to stand on a tall observation
tower to look out at the battle fields. It was so windy and rainy that I was
afraid that I might get blown off. I
also liked the Pennsylvania State Memorial because I could climb to the top of the
memorial. It was very cold and raining the whole day, so we did not stay on the
top for long. The stairs were spiral stairs and hard to climb. If it was not
raining all day, we would have been able to get out of the car more to look at
more of the fabulous monuments. I knew
about the mini ball and other Civil War weapons already, and got to see some in
the museum. I also saw many green and black canons. We saw the Gettysburg National
Cemetery, but we did not go inside the gates because it was pouring rain. We
had a big lunch at a nice restaurant, and then we left for Washington D.C.
It
was two short hours from Gettysburg to Washington D.C. We arrived in the late
afternoon. The hotel we stayed at is called the Embassy Suite Chevy Chase. We went on the loud and dirty Metro (subway)
to Union Station to get tickets for the Old Town Trolley Moonlight Monuments
tour. The orange trolley first stopped at the famous Lincoln Memorial. It wasn’t
dark quite yet, so we walked up the many marble steps. I saw the Gettysburg Address
on the wall, and the giant statue of Abraham Lincoln. After seeing the
stupendous Lincoln Memorial, we went to the amazing Korean Memorial. That is the one were the marble statues
looks as if they are on patrol, and one of the soldiers is looking behind him
as if he heard something. The marble statues are wearing rain coats and helmets,
and they carried guns. The marble statues were standing in bushes and grass,
and they were lit up from underneath. I thought that the lighting at night made
the brave soldiers look like ghosts. After the Korean Memorial, we went to the sad
Vietnam Memorial. That is where there is a tall black wall that has carved on
it all the names of the people that died in the Vietnam War. There are 58,272
names of brave soldiers on the wall, and next to some of the names, people left
flowers. The tour guide told us that around
3 million people visit the Vietnam Memorial each year. We were sitting on trolley
for a while, and we passed the World War II Memorial and the Washington
Monument. The Washington Monument is closed because there was damage during an
earthquake and it’s getting fixed. We then stopped at the newest memorial, the Martin
Luther King. Jr Memorial. It opened to the public on August 22, 2011. The last
time I went to Washington D.C., the Martin Luther King. Jr Memorial was not
there. The stone that has the relief of MLK is quite big. None of the statutes
can be larger than Lady Liberty on top of the Capitol, but since Martin Luther
King is a relief (and not a statue) he is much bigger than the 19 ½ foot Lady
Liberty. We spent time at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial too, since it is
near the Martin Luther King Memorial. The Franklin D. Roosevelt memorial has many
small statutes of FDR. One of the statues is of Roosevelt sitting in a chair
with his little dog sitting beside him. Another statue is of him in a
wheelchair. There is a waterfall too, but it was drained for the winter. There
are statues of men waiting in a line for bread. We walked along a moonlit path
next to a lake. On the other side of the lake we could see the Jefferson
Memorial. We drove past the Capitol building many times on our moonlight tour,
and many more important buildings. Our tour guide was funny and told us stories
about all the buildings. We left then and went to Arlington to see Iwo Jima. That
is the Memorial that has five American Marines and a Navy Corpsman raising an
American flag. The soldiers raised the American flag on Mount Suribachi in February 23, 1945. The last time we came to Washington D.C. we did not get to see the Iwo
Jima Memorial. We passed Arlington cemetery and saw all the grave stones. By
the end of the tour, we were all exhausted. We decided to take a taxi back to
the hotel instead of the metro. Leo and Sam were asleep in the taxi. It was after
midnight.
The next day, it was raining all day. We were
lucky to have nice weather for our moonlight tour, so we mostly sat on the
trolley all day and toured the city. It was raining so hard, we stayed on the
trolley and rode it all the way around and did the entire tour two more times. We
did get off once to see the Jefferson Memorial. There was a 19 foot statute of
Jefferson inside. At 2:00, we had to be at the Capitol for our scheduled tour. We
got to see the iron Capitol dome and the paintings that are on the ceiling of
the dome. One of the paintings on the round ceiling is called a fresco. The
Capitol building has a massive statue collection. There are sand pillars that
hold up the Dome. Every state has two statues in the statue room. The dome is
so big that the Statue of Liberty could fit in the capitol dome on its side
lying down, and there would still be some space to spare, but the pillars would
get crushed under the weight of the statue of liberty. On the roof of the
Capitol building is a great statue called Lady Liberty and she faces east
because the sun rises in front of her and the sets behind her. There is another
painting in the dome that shows the long United States history. After our tour
of the Capitol, we went to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. At the museum,
we went on a ride where we pretended that we were pilots. I rode with my big
brother. He was the pilot and I was the gunner. My brother kept us upside down all
the time. I had to shoot the enemy aircraft. We only shot down two before our
airplane got shot down. At the museum, we saw the first ballistic missile and
Amelia Earhart’s plane. I’ve been to the Air and Space Museum before, but I was
still disappointed that we didn’t get to stay there too long. Everyone was
tired and hungry and wanted to go back to the hotel to eat. We had to walk
around in the rain for thirty minutes to find the Metro, and then it was a long
train ride back to the hotel. We were soaked to the skin and cold. We ate in
the room and watched movies on TV. The next morning we left for home.
