The Washington Monument

I've wanted to go up the Washington Monument since my first trip through Washington, DC with my Grandpa when I was 12.  I finally got to do it!

The weekend was absolutely gorgeous for a day in the city.  We took the train in and fooled around at my new favorite burger and shake joint and in our favorite sculpture garden before heading to the monument.  

We were all excited!

I'm sure citizens of other countries think the same thing about their flags, but I think there is nothing prettier than an American flag waving on a beautiful day.

You can't climb the stairs anymore...phooey.  We took an elevator to the top.  The views were amazing in all four directions.

I wish I could say the monument was all I expected it to be, but it wasn't.  My visit fell flat, actually.  I learned nothing new about our first president, which I thought was sad.  Most of the other monuments have small museum so you can learn about the men.  This one didn't.  All the history was about the building of the Washington Monument.  If you want to learn about George Washington, go to Mt. Vernon and skip his monument.

After that, we raced to the Newseum to catch a glimpse of our nephew who was in Washington on a school trip.  His chaperones told us we could have spent the day with them, but we didn't want to intrude, we'd done everything they were doing, and we'd already bought those monument tickets before we knew he was coming.  The kids literally got to say hi, give him a hug, and tell him bye as we went our separate ways again.  

We wrapped up our day with a visit to another art museum and the botanical gardens.

There's still so much we didn't see while living in Washington, but we did our best.  Now it's off to new places :).