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Day 133 Washinton DC 4th day
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Day 133 Washington 4th day
Can you believe it? We have spent four days in and about this city and yet we have only scratched the surface of all the museums and wonderful interesting stuff to view.
We headed out as seasoned travellers, knowing exactly how to work the system of the parking and metro, (again we reiterate the metro systems in this country are excellent! Certainly makes us wonder why Australia cannot learn from this) We headed direct to Virginia (on the metro across the river) to the Pentagon first, this was again a moving tribute to the people who died on 9/11 with the names of the victims on the plane with stainless steel sculptures facing in, and those dying on the inside of the building, with stainless steel sculptures facing out, in a water and pebble garden. Most impressive.
Back to the Metro and to the Spy Museum.
This was a fun spent two hours, with hands on stuff as we learnt to be spies through the ages including 2nd world war and cold war information. With snippets of James Bond and Get Smart as well. The Soviets were using Shoes to carry secrets in the 1950's. We guess at times the TV features some real stuff from real times, to weave the magick of the screen.
Interesting to note here, America spends $83 million dollars per day on spy stuff!
We headed to "Ollie's Diner" for a hamburger lunch, great a real life diner.
Hopped on the bus about to complete the journey or sections we had missed the day before, including the Jefferson memorial, Columbus circle and other great buildings.
Onto the Metro to cross back into Virginia for the Iowa Jima memorial. We managed to switch metro lines twice to achieve this goal without getting lost. Well done team!
This memorial was surrounded by War Veterans from Omaha Nebraska on a tour in five buses, with carers assisting them. One fellow spotted Earnie's hat and started a conversation with him, and was happy to run into another Australian, he had travelled on the Queen Elizabeth to the England in WWII, on the ship were some Australians, he said he would never forget them standing in uniform at attention as the ship sailed into England. Earnie managed to give the old soldier some information about the Queen Elizabeth, being that, it had been fitted out as a troop carrier in Sydney, as well as the first ship to bring US troops to Australia and landed them at Glebe Island, this was new information for him.
Another moment in time, of our journey that makes the trip worth while.
The Monument of Iowa Jima was certainly impressive and for that matter a little moving if we consider the significance and the fact it was surrounded by veterans at the time of our visit.
We headed back to the metro station and found our way back. We hopped on our metro and headed back home. We certainly were late arrivals back for dinner but felt we had exhausted Washington (and ourselves) by this time. Again we caught up with Owen and Bev, to recap on their days outing and compare battle storeys of the day.
Sleep was a much required commodity tonight.
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