Our DC trip round 2 ...
In between the revolving door of monument hopping, we managed to work in a bit of personal travel photography. We heard there was some sort of famous house on Pennsylvania Ave.. so we decided to head in that direction straight away. |
| Fortunately, our hotel was located ON Pennsylvania Ave, so we didn't have to go too far. UNfortunately, we are directionally challenged and turned the wrong way right out of the gate. |
| On the way out of the hotel, we snagged a few shots of the cherry blossom trees. We actually missed the blooming period by about two weeks...but it was close enough that we were able to find a few stragglers still holding on. |
| This was the lobby of our hotel, The Willard. It is ranked as one of the top 5 hotels in all of Washington, DC. Oh yeah -- it's an Intercontinental hotel... so who thinks my hotel rewards points craze is funny now? Yeah. That's what I thought! :-) |
| When we were busily walking in the wrong direction, we came across the National Theatre. This led to some excited utterances about theatre tickets, which led to us seeing Chicago that same evening. I knew we should have gone the other direction! Although, I admit the show - starring John O'Hurley (Seinfeld, Dancing with the Stars) as Billy and Charlotte d’Amboise (Tony award winner, Chicago on Broadway) as Roxi - was superb. |
| We found that we got some of our favorite images by ignoring the tour guide and NOT going right to the "Kodak Picture Spot". I actually preferred our view walking to the designated picture spot. |
| The Lincoln Memorial. Meg's daytime shot - as she was wearing new, uncomfortable shoes (which I told her not to do, thank you very much) and we had been walking for hours... she sent me up to see the big guy. |
| Some serious looking statues. Neither of us can remember where this was - all we know for certain is that it was taken from a moving trolley car. |
| The US Supreme Court Building via trolley. |
| Meg wanted to see the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History - which we agreed neither of us planned nearly enough time for. Next time.... |
| I get a little rough looking if I skip breakfast. |
| The Jefferson Memorial. We just so happened to visit on Jefferson's birthday which led to crazy over-crowding. LOTS of school groups. So again...we skipped the Kodak Picture Spot & created our own little vantage point. |
| Turns out, we had a great nighttime view of the Washington Monument when we spun around. The shot on the right was snagged during Jackie & Tom's engagement session. |
| Earlier in the post you'll remember I made the trek up to see President Lincoln in the afternoon. For the night time tour, it was Meg's turn to take the hike. I'll concede the point...she won this one, hands down. |
| The Iwo Jima monument was amazing to see as a photographer... the scene on the right is a 3d replica of what is arguably the most significant & famous wartime photograph of all time. |
| The nighttime images were all taken at night as part of the Monuments by Moonlight tour through On Board Tours, which we would highly recommend. (We did the Old Town Trolley Tours during the day and quickly forfeited our tickets for seeing the capitol by foot, as the waits were LONG and the buses overcrowded.) I will say that for us, the photo tours moved a little too slowly. We are accustomed to walking in to situations and having to 'get the shot' pretty quickly - so we tended to have lots of down time to walk around while we waited for the rest of the bus to catch up. |
| The Washington Memorial by Moonlight. |
| According to our tour guide, the World War Two Memorial is one of the newer monuments in the city that was just recently completed. |
| Wow...we REALLY turned the wrong way... there's that house we were looking for! It only took us 12 hours of find it. We actually had to settle for the rear view as the Easter Egg Roll had the front lawn on lock down. |
Things we didn't photograph but were major highlights during our trip:
- Private walking tour of The Pentagon with our groom/tour guide Tom (a very cool guy, indeed)
- Lunch with Tom & friends at Paparazzi - we thought the name was fitting for us, no?
- The Holocaust Museum (powerful stuff - but anything I might say here will just sound trite... check it out if you get the chance)
- Sushi with Jackie & Tom
- Cuban meets Mexican with my best friend Tim & his new bride Maria
- Meg falling on her face (and almost breaking her ankle) when she fell in a hole in the ground during the engagement session ...
and really, I'm not mean to want pictures or video of this - even Meg was laughing
- and the best bed I've ever slept in featuring crisp, cool, ironed sheets
And yes...this really is what we did in between monuments in all that down time. |
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