Big Cities

We have been very busy in the past few weeks in two of the most famous cities in the US: Washington D.C. and New York City.

 Let's start with the nation's capitol. One of the first tours we took was of the Capitol.  Now, we took a private tour of the place so we got to see tons of murals on the walls and ceiling. But the main thing there was the Rotunda. In it were multiple statues of presidents and important people. In another room there was a statue for each state. On the ceiling in the Rotunda there was a massive mural that was just so beautiful. Plus, Washington was in the middle of it (which, by the way, he would've hated).

 Then we luckily got in for a tour of the president's home: the White House. There was a painting in every room we visited, and in most a clock. We saw some of the china that they used in the White House, which had changed dramatically over the years. My favorite part was how Lincoln's portrait stood alone in a room because his family requested it. And at the end, we stood in front of the President's seal!

 We also got a little tour of the Supreme Court. All they talked about were the court cases and how they couldn't do all the cases. But the building itself was cool!

The memorials were stunning! We didn't get to go to the top of the Washington Monument because the elevator was under construction (Boo!). The Jefferson Memorial was very impressive with the 19ft tall statue of Jefferson in the middle. The statue weighs 5 tons! The Lincoln Memorial has 145(?) steps total, I believe. Correct me if I'm wrong. Lincoln's statue was also 19 ft tall, like Jefferson's.

Now, the Vietnam Memorial is a little different. It's a wall with every single solider's name on it. It's got tons of flowers and medals put there by the families. As for the Korean War Memorial, it had a wall with the names of those soldiers and then a small field of statues, looking like soldiers in enemy territory.  While we were there, we also saw the Naval Memorial and the Air Force Memorial.

Then we visited Arlington Cemetery. We got a tour of JFK's grave. His wife, Jacqueline, wished for him to be buried there. She also wanted an Eternal Flame to be placed upon his grave. She got both her wishes. JFK's brothers were buried there too.

As if seeing all the monuments during the day wasn't enough, we got a tour of all the monuments at night as well! The funniest bit was that the Washington Monument had eyes!

We went to a lot of museums while we were there! One of our first museums was the Newseum. It was really cool because it had news headlines and pictures from around the world. It even had a piece of the Twin Towers and a chunk of the Berlin Wall! That was one of my favorites. Time for the Spy Museum! This one was awesome because we got to see a lot of spy gadgets and secret codes. Oh, and you can't forget James Bond's special section of the museum! This is another top choice, the American History Museum.  This one is all about objects from different time periods of the U.S. It is really fun to see all the objects that make up our history! The saddest museum, by far, was the Holocaust Museum. It really explained the emotions of those people living in the camps. It's fairly self-explanatory, however. It's always hard to go through those types of museums.

 I've covered MOST of the stuff we've done in Washington D.C, so we can move on to New York City! Of course, one of the first things we saw was the Statue of Liberty. Not only did we see it, but we got to go inside it! We walked up a bunch of stairs to get to a very pretty view of the city. We also got to see a cool museum about how the French built it and why. They also showed previous models of what it would have looked like if they stuck with those old designs. After that, we got zipped up an elevator to the 102 floor of the Empire State Building. It was a little freaky, but we had a great view of New York and the Statue of Liberty! How about "Night at the Museum?" One of my favorite movies was filmed at the famous National History Museum. My favorite part of the museum was the skeletons, but the Hope Diamond was very cool too! Then we took a lovely boat trip around the harbor, where we learned about the history of New York a bit more. We couldn't go the full way around because of construction.

The final things I'm gonna talk about are the Broadway Shows that we saw. We saw Anastasia, Aladdin, and The Play That Goes Wrong. Anastasia was very pretty, with some very pretty singing involved. Aladdin was very fun and musical as well. And The Play That Goes Wrong... was absolutely hilarious. The idea was that they mixed up the professional actors with college students. While it was definitely my favorite, all the plays were amazing. That is all that I have to say about New York for now, but I might make a part 2!

Sorry this blog has been so insanely late! It's taken way too long... but thanks for reading!