Since my time in Washington D.C. was limited to 2 days before and one morning after the Marine Corps Marathon, excluding jet lag I think we should have been a bit more organized about our tourism. One thing I really wish we had planned better was a tour of the white house. After reviewing the pages at whitehouse.gov I found if we had arranged for a tour about 3 months out we probably could have a tour of the white house. Unfortunately, a night in the Lincoln bedroom was outside my budget plans. The first day of sight seeing was spent at the Expo and we tried to get around and see a few things on the Mall. The Lincoln memorial and some of the Vietnam memorial are about all we got to before the rain forced us inside. On the second day we tried to do some organized sight seeing with the ‘trolley’. This was a somewhat guided tour with about 15 stopping points where you could get out and prowl around most of the major monuments. Although not a designated stop, it did stop at the Arlington Cemetery. You can take another tour there for a few buck that will cruse you over to the tomb of the unknown soldier. I could really recommend this tour. You sit when you want and get out and stretch when you want. I just wish we had started earlier as it was very interesting with loads of fun facts. I will do this tour again sometime in the future. It made the sights more interesting. I would also consider making the Arlington Cemetery adventure in the morning (it gets crowded in the afternoon) and doing something else in the afternoon. Maybe a tour of Georgetown. There is also a night tour of the monuments that sounded nice, but impracticable as we were trying to get as much rest as possible. I saved my shopping for the Monday. There is a large in Pentagon City. I managed to pick up a few things, but it was a mall and there few discounts.
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Buford (AKA ‘the Pachyderm’)
When I talked about going to the Air and Space Museum, CJ was totally locked in to the discussion… which indicates he may be ready to visit it in two years instead of the 4 years I was thinking.