Washington, D.C. day 2

Today I did some work and then Mike and I did the Twilight Tour presented by Tourmobile. It meets at Union Station at 6:30pm and goes until about 10:30pm. We liked the tour very much. The narrator was funny and never stopped talking, pointing out all the sights that our guidebooks miss, even the boring buildings like the Dept of Labor.

We got to Union Station a little bit early and had dinner at the Center Cafe, which is, of course, in the center of the station. It's 2-stories so you can eat up top and have a nice view of the station if you want to.

Then we got on the bus/tram thing. We drove by the Capitol where we could see that they are setting up for the concert on July 4th.

The bus's first stop was at the Thomas Jefferson Memorial. It stopped there for about 20 minutes so we could get off the bus and spend time visiting and taking pictures. This was one of our favorite memorials.

The picture below is me on the steps of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial.

Here is a picture of the Occupant returning to the White House. No kidding. Ok, I don't know if this is his helicopter, or a decoy. Evidently the helicopters always fly in 3s so that you don't know which one contains the Pres. But we saw all 3, so our driver told us that was definitely him.

The second tram stop is at the FDR Memorial. It is 4 outdoor rooms representing his 4 terms of office. We liked this sculpture. FDR's two index fingers are gold, where people have been touching his fingers. Also his knee.

And also his dog's ears.

Here is my picture of a duck in front of the Washington Monument.

Then the bus took us to the Lincoln Memorial, Vietnam War Memorial, and Korean War Memorial. Here is Mike observing the wall. At this time I really took notice of how few people seem to be here in D.C. The last time I was here was in 2004, and it was packed. At that time, when I visited the wall, there were 2 single-file lines parading past the wall. One headed north, one headed south. Both were completely bumper to bumper. It would not have been possible to stop and take a picture like this one. In fact, I attempted to take a picture of a stretch of the memorial that was virtually empty of people. But my lousy camera couldn't capture it. Anyway, I'm not sure if it is truly NOT crowded here this week, which is supposed to be the most crowdedest time of the year, or if it was unusually crowded when I was here before, or what...

The last tram stop was at the WWII Memorial. I got to see the grand opening of that one when I was here before. This was before I had a digi cam, so I will have to scan the pictures to add here later. This time I saw the memorial at night, which was very pretty. It was a nice way to end the evening. I'm so tired and distracted, I do not want to go to work tomorrow!