Gettysburg and Washington D.C. March 28-30

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.