Washington, D.C. - the city of monuments and sore feet

This city has 155 monuments, plus heaps of museums, galleries, etc and we had just over one day to see it all!
We arrived last night at Ronald Reagan Airport around 6pm.  It was around 7pm by the time we'd checked into our hotel and decided to wander out for some night photos of Washington, DC.

We walked to the White House first, got some photos from the front then made our way to the other side.
We then wandered up to the Washington Monument which was glowing in the distance.  From there we saw the Capitol building in the distance by then and thought we'd walk closer.. not realising really how far it was - we walked.. and walked and walked, and then decided we really didn't feel like walking much further and so took our best photos and headed back.  We meandered past the National Gallery, National Archives, Dept of Justice and walked back the rest of the way to our hotel - stopping only briefly to grab a quick dinner on the way.

This morning we decided to sleep in and take it easy to start with, both our batteries were low so we didn't get going on our travels until 11am or so.  We caught the Metro to get closer to the Capitol Building and this time wandered right up to it and got some awesome photos of it, the Grant memorial, then we wandered up to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum and had a wander around inside.  This place had a huge collection of planes, rockets, and satellites.  The plane that Amelia Earheart flew, the Wright Brothers planes, and NASA's spacecraft that they landed on the moon.  Pretty cool stuff.
We then walked over to the Smithsonian National History Museum and rushed through, but got to see some pretty amazing exhibits, including the beautiful Hope Diamond - one of the largest flawless diamonds in the world.
We were pretty tired by this point, and decided to catch a pedi-cab to the Lincoln Memorial and give our feet a bit of a break.  The pedi-cab guy was great and we felt bad for him when we realised how far it really was (prolly 2-3 miles or about 3-4km) and gave him a bit extra.
The Lincoln memorial was pretty cool - got some great photos of it and then we wandered back along past the Korean War memorial, Martin Luthor King memorial, and made our way around the tidal basin to the Jefferson Memorial.
We were both getting pretty tired by this point and I'd worked up a blister on my toe and was starting to limp so we decided to head back - we caught the Metro back to the White House and got a few more shots of it in the daytime before heading back to the hotel where we had dinner and called it a day.
By my calculation, we've traveled around 10 miles (16km) since we got here!

- J -