we arrived at arlington cemetery pretty quickly and once we got to the entrance gate we were surprised to see a giant line... like giant. so we got in line... not knowing what was going on. eventually we realized we were in line to ride the bus... or trolley or whatever to go to the ceremony at the amphitheater... we waited for a long time and then finally made it on a bus only to be told we weren't allowed to move for a while because president obama was on his way... what? crazy. and sure enough 20 min later his motorcade came driving through right in front of us. a whole 20 car motorcade :)
finally we were on our way in and once we made it to the amphitheater it was full and they were no longer letting people in because obama was there.... it was funny... chris was excited to thing we would be going to a ceremony that obama was in attendance and then we couldn't go because obama was there.. haha! it was awesome. sadly because of the ceremony they weren't letting you in to see any of the other cool monuments like Kennedy's or tomb of the unknown etc. we could walk around just not to those till after the ceremony at 1pm... it was 11 so we decided not to stay. we took a few pictures because it was BEAUTIFUL there with all the tombstones and trees with changing leaves... we snapped a few shots and left.
we took the subway back to national mall and headed to the holocaust museum. we weren't allowed to take any pics so i don't have any :) but it was an interesting experience. not sad to the point of crying, but sobering. there was so much information to read and pictures to see, we read through as much as we could. i didn't realize how early the torturing had started and all the crazy things they were doing to make people's lives miserable. i love world war II history and have read lots of books and seen a bunch of movies on the subject, so it wasn't overly shocking to read and see the things in the museum, but so informative and sad. at the beginning they give you an identification card (boy or girl) and as you go through the museum you check on different pages and see what happened to your person. my girl was put in a work camp and even marched in the 4 month death march, but she lived. amazing someone could live through all that. chris' was a rebel and fought back with the polish as much as he could and carried stuff in sewers and such and even fought with guns later and he still lived. i left feeling grateful that we live in this country were we are free to practice religion we want... i love being a member ofThe Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and I would be so sad if we lived in a place where we weren't allowed to live as we chose.
after we left we had to get drinks and sit and eat our lunches... we were starved!!! we sat by the carousel and watched the cute kids riding around. after lunch we decided to walk up to the capitol building and look at it... take some pics :)
we then walked towards our hotel and decided to stop at ford's theater where president lincoln was shot and killed... and we also saw the house where he actually died. we didn't go in either since we had the stroller and sleeping baby, but we walked by it... i also wanted to show chris the gum trees... i had been to DC when i was 18 (10 years ago!!) on a church history tour and i remember the trees covered in gum outside ford's theater... and they were gone this time! not the trees but the gum... and you can see where they have scrapped it off and then put iron gates around the trees to stop you from putting gum on it... a little sad cause they were cool but they did look a little gross covered in chewed gum.
we walked over to the hard rock cafe for dinner and it was so loud with music and people yelling for birthdays and amazingly my baby stayed asleep though most of dinner... and even when he woke up he was very good to just hang out in his stroller... we are so spoiled with this one!! after dinner we headed back to the hotel and called it a night... another good day in dc!
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