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The wonderful thing about traveling as a family keen to do stuff is the chance to get more done. More of that in a minute, my big blunder in planning the trip was not booking a White House tour. They must be booked at least 3 weeks in advance. I didn't find that out until 10 days to go. So we saw the White House from outside on a few occasions, day and night. Anyway, back to today... It's a free elevator ride to the top of the 555 foot Washington monument, tickets can be booked ahead of time, or same day tickets are first come first served starting at 8 or 8:30AM. Christopher was keen to do it and volunteered to take the metro early and wait in line. He got us tickets for 1pm and we met him outside the White House.
We headed over to the Capitol to use our Senate and House passes. The security line outside was OK the strange thing is the two sets of rules inside. We stood in line and went to the Senate chamber. You are not allowed to take photos but you can take in cameras and cell phones. We then tried to go to the House of Representatives, but needed to go to a different line and check in our camera and phones. The house does not allow photos and you MUST not take in any devices.
After we saw congress we headed over to the Washington monument. After a wait outside in the sun we finally got in a waited a little more for the elevator up the tower. It was the tallest building in the world when completed and soon overtaken by the Eiffel Tower. It us still the tallest free standing stone structure, newer buildings have a steel frame, this is just stone.
The view from the top is fantastic, you look out over the city nd river and right down to the White House.
Another great Food truck at golden triangle, Faragut, good Korean food.
We went over to Arlington National Cemetery, a beautiful, scenic green and rolling and moving place. We saw the changing of the guard at the tomb of the unknown soldiers. It was blusteringly hot and a lone guard in an impeccable uniform marches up and down for half n hour at a time.
We headed back for a swim and then to the Adams Morgan district for some fantastic food at Saku Ramen - chashu pork (pork bellies) and then to Jack Rose, home of ~2,500 whiskies from all around the world. We were quite restrained, 3 great glasses....
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