Washington DC - Day 1

After an insanely bad flight experience (4 hr delay in Atlanta) which put us into Reagan Airport at 4:30am, we headed to our Hyatt Crystal City hotel for a brief rest until we had to leave for our morning White House tour.  For the White House we worked through our Congressman Bill Flores's office to get both WH and Capitol tours.  The WH picked one of three days, which happened to be the morning we arrived.  So, everything worked out OK, and we made it to the White House on time.


We started at the WH visitor's center, where we saw a bunch of presidential memorabilia, like a mini-museum, then we made our way up the street to the WH entrance.  After going through three security checkpoints, we made it into the actual East Wing of the White House for our self guided tour.  The tour wound through a few of the East Wing rooms and did not take very long.  We passed up a few groups as we blazed through the many rooms like the theater, the blue and red rooms, the china room, and the large dining room.







"I am Cornholio!"

View of Washington Monument out of the window

For my Alma Mater Roosevelt High School

After the WH, we picked up a few souvenirs at a gift shop across the street and then searched around for some lunch.  We happened on the Old Ebbitt Grill, a landmark dining spot famous for crabcakes and a massive interior with four bar areas and multiple rooms.  We had a monster buffalo chicken sandwich, two huge delicious crab cakes, and some burgers.  Big bill - oops we're on vacation.







We headed back to the hotel for a quick rest still feeling it from the late night at the airport then grabbed an Uber to Mount Vernon, the home of George Washington.  Getting there so late in the day, we missed many of the exhibits and events, but also the crowds.  We were the only ones it the 1000 seat movie theater at the beginning and only had to wait minutes for a tour of the Mansion.  The Mansion was pretty large - we liked looking in the same mirror that Washington did and the expansive views of the Potomac river.  It was really a sweet place to live.  There are 10 bedrooms in the mansion and they had many and frequent visitors, although I bet they wished they had the modern AC which has been added - the humidity and heat was going pretty good by late afternoon.


After the mansion tour we went to Washington's tomb, rebuilt after his death to his specifications.  Then we headed back to our hotel for more naps, a swim at the pool and a quick McDonald's dinner.










For our last trip of the day we headed back into DC to watch a tribute to the Apollo 11 moon landing which happened 50 years ago to the day (July 20, 1969).  On the Smithsonian lawn, two huge projection screens showed the events of the rocket launch and moon landing.  It was a really powerful
show and we all agreed it was the best thing of the day.  There were at least 10,000 people there and there were two more showings after ours.  As part of the show, the Washington Monument had a photo realistic Apollo 11 rocket projected onto it and it took off during the show.  Hopefully I can get a DVD of the show it was so good, I would watch it again.  It left us all proud to be Americans.

So, after fighting mega-traffic for the next shows, we got a ride home and called it a night (as I type this at 1am).  :)