On such a nice day we visited Arlington National Cemetery first. It might seem like an odd place to go on such a bright, sunny day, but I think it's a place of historical significance that deserves to be seen.
The two main points of interest there are JFK's gravesite and the Tomb of the Unknown (American) Soldier. Jaqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis is buried beside her husband, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Also buried there are Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy and Senator Edward Moore "Ted" Kennedy.
We also visited the U.S. Marine Corps Memorial which is about 10-15 minutes walk north of the cemetery. Created by sculptor Felix W. de Weldon, it's modeled after the famous photo taken by Joe Rosenthal of five Marines and a Navy hospital corpsman raising an American flag at Iwo Jima on February 19th, 1945.
By then we were all pretty hungry. When we noticed a fast food Mexican place called Chipotle we stopped for burritos. We ate fairly quickly then hopped on the subway and headed for the zoo.
Like the other Smithsonian institutions (Art museum, Natural History museum, Air and Space museum, etc.) the Zoo was free too.
For me the main attraction of this particular zoo was the Giant Pandas. They had come to the Toronto Zoo once before, but I don't remember getting to see them. The exhibit would have been quite crowded and I'm guessing people were only allowed to view the pandas for a certain length of time. If they were hiding away in a corner asleep or something then, too bad. You were out of luck.
Well, this time I thought I was out of luck again. Won, Hannah and I checked the whole Giant Panda enclosure (which was quite large) and didn't see a thing. Luckily I check one of the indoor viewing areas and saw one of the two Giant Pandas enjoying an afternoon snack of bamboo. That was quite thrilling. I took quite a few shots. Unfortunately they all look the same. He's just sitting there chewing on bamboo shoots.
The lions and tigers and cheetahs were neat too. But, my other favorite shots would have been the ones I took of the jellyfish there. The were kind of small. I don't know what kind they were, but they were really cool looking. Check my Flickr.com page if you want to see them.
Dinner was at a tea place in Georgetown. Then we headed over to Mimi's parents' place to pick her and Bryce up and take them home.
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The next morning Won dropped me off at the Megabus.com parking lot. After four days in Washington I was going home. Even though the weather was kind of rotten for most of my trip I still was happy I visited. There's a lot to see here. I'd come again to catch up on the stuff I missed for sure.
Coincidentally enough I bumped into a girl, Stephanie Wong (Bill Wong's youngest daughter), I know from my church who was taking the same bus back as me. She was visiting her cousin who was on work assignment from Montreal. She shared his hotel room in Georgetown the swanky area of the city. Lucky her.
We had a good chat on the way back. It turns out she like traveling too. One of her favorite places is Japan (where she went for a month with some of her friends after they graduated from school). We managed to talk for most of the 11 hour ride back home. That was more interesting than just sitting on my own by myself for sure.
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