Day 178 - Washington, DC Sightseeing in the Heat

We got ready and drove 35 minutes or so into Washington, DC and parked up. Danny has an app on his phone and it has self-guided tours for certain cities; this was one of them. We decided we might as well follow one of these tours as it covered everything we wanted to see and a few extras. The only downside to this tour was that it required us to walk a fair distance and the temperature was a steady 104 ⁰F.

First stop was as the Whitehouse. We took in the view from the rear, yet most photographed, side of the building and then moved on.

Next on our tour was the Washington Monument which could be seen from almost everywhere nearby anyway. It was interesting to see the colour change in the stone used in the construction of the obelisk that occurred when construction had to be put on hold for a while. When construction resumed, the quarry that they’d been getting the stone from had run out of that particular stone and so they had to use what was now available to them!

Stop three was at the World War 2 Memorial where we spent a few minutes looking around.

Then we moved on to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and were left in awe at just how many names were engraved into the stones here of men who’d died in these wars.

Stop five was the iconic Lincoln Memorial with the huge seated statue of Honest Abe inside the columned building.

We then had a very, very brief walk to see the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. We’d been able to see this from the Washington Monument though and, to add to our short viewing stop, the pool is currently under construction for a bit of a re-vamp.

The heat was taking its toll on us both and so we stood under a sprinkler for a few minutes and then went and grabbed some refreshments in the shade; rested for 10 minutes or so before moving along.

We then saw the Korean Veterans Memorial before continuing to the Franklin D Roosevelt Memorial (largest surface area of all the monuments here.)

Stop nine was at the Thomas Jefferson Memorial.

We were both too hot by this point and were tiring of walking in these stupid temperatures. We both looked at our tour and saw that we still had another 3 mile round trip to complete and decided then that we’d cut out the last two stops it had suggested (US Capitol Building and US Supreme Court.) Instead we went and looked around the Holocaust Memorial Museum (it was ok but not brilliant) before heading back to the car which wasn’t too far away from this point. We also decided not to visit the Smithsonian Institution as we’d pretty much been beaten by the walking and the weather. This place offers about 15 or so museums to take your time wandering round and we weren’t feeling up for that!

We the stuck the air-con onto max and went back to the motel, getting a Subway each en-route.