October 7, 2015: Washington D.C. City Tour

The bus drove us in from Woodbridge, VA to get our step on guide.   I was shocked by all of the traffic coming into the city.   I would use public transportation as it would take you 1 1/2 hours to get to work.  

We had an excellent guide, Helen.    Our first stop was going to see the White House but as our group walked to the square where you can see the home, the Secret Service said we couldn't as they were closing it off so we had to see this later.      

We went to the World War II memorial which was gorgeous.   16 million served in World War II but about 400,000 were killed.   All 50 states were represented in this memorial.    

We also saw the Korean memorial.     

The Vietnam memorial was very nice. All the names of the deceased or still missing were engraved on this memorial.  We found my mom's classmate, Dennis Lanore, who died in 1966.    They had a book with the names that told you where on the memorial it could be found.   

The Lincoln Memorial was massive and was built like the Parthenon in Greece.   

We had lunch at Au Bon Pain inside Union Station.   

Then, we took a tour of Capitol Hill.   We went inside the rotunda which was being restored.   They have underground tunnels and public transportation.     Saw the Supreme Court and Library of Congress.   

Went back to see the White House as well as the Blair house which is the Presidential guest house.  George Washington was the only President who did not live in the White House as it hadn't been constructed.   The Oval Office is in the East Wing and Michelle Obama's office is in the East Wing.   The Obama's live in the upper floors.  

We had dinner at Smoky Bones back in Woodbridge which was next to our hotel.  We had to wait for our food for over an hour, then the server lost our order and they got our order wrong.   Other people had to wait forever.   I complained to the manager and we got our meal for free.