Today we started out by walking to the Lincoln Memorial.  This took us by the Iwo Jima memorial, through part of Arlington National Cemetary, and across the Potomac via the Arlington Memorial Bridge.  This gets you directly behind the Lincoln Memorial.

After checking out the Lincoln Memorial, and getting some pretty nice shots of the National Mall and reflecting pool, we started walking down towards the WWII memorial.  At this point I forgot that we needed to take a side trip to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, but we’ll just catch it another day.

We wandered around the WWII memorial a bit, then headed south through the FDR Memorial Park, along the Tidal Basin, heading for the Jefferson Memorial.

After checking out the Jefferson Memorial we walked up towards the Smithsonian Institute, to get to the metro station nearby.  We took the metro back to Rosslyn, did some shopping and ate at Ruby Tuesday, then headed back to the room.

We did a LOT of walking so that was pretty much it for our day.  Tomorrow’s plan looks like heading to Smithsonian museums, except the National Air and Space Museum, which gets its own day (probably Thursday).

Today’s pictures are in the Day 2 gallery.

We started off the day with… trying to watch a Dream Theater concert in our room.  Great start to a vacation isn’t it?  My brother will have to post with the details, but we were trying to watch DT over the net at some concert in the UK.  Unfortunately, the Internet access here at the hotel is spotty and wasn’t working well with streaming video.  So we ditched the concert and went outside into the blazing sun.

The Iwo Jima memorial is right around the corner so that was our first stop.  It sits roughly at the end of the Theodore Roosevelt bridge and is quite scenic.  The memorial is surrounded by a pretty nice park and it was sunny and warm today so there were lots of people out.

After that we walked south towards Arlington National Cemetery.  On the way there was a nice bell tower donated by the Netherlands government in thanks for being liberated during the Second World War.

We walked into ANC and started making our way towards the JFK memorial and Eternal Flame.  The cemetery is very scenic, lots of trees, and of course many, many gravestones.  There are no joggers, bikes, or cars allowed in most of the cemetery so it was very peaceful compared to the other parts of town we’ve been in so far.

After taking pictures at the JFK memorial we headed over to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.  Right as we were about to leave there, they started a change of the guard, so we stayed and watched the ceremony.

At this point, I wanted to try and walk to the Air Force Memorial, which just south of the cemetery.  We started heading that way but apparently there are no exits out the south part of the cemetery, so we had to walk back around to the north part.  Eventually we decided we were getting hungry and decided to head back to the hotel.

We ate a late lunch (it was 2-3pm at this point) and then decided to drive over to the USAF memorial.  After 20 minutes or so of trying to figure out exactly what exit and road to take (this place is confusing) we finally got to the memorial’s parking lot.  The Air Force memorial is on a nice little promontory overlooking the Pentagon and DC skyline.  The memorial has very clean lines and is very well put together.  It has lights all over it, so sometime this week I want to head back over at night because I’m sure it is all lit up.

We wrapped up our evening with a trip to the shopping area just north of our hotel in Rosslyn.  This part of the area seems to be rather upper-class, with lots of apartments, condos, and business centers.  A little further west, where we ate last night, seems to be mostly college student area.  Overall it’s pretty nice having supplies within a few blocks.

Tomorrow the plan is to try walking across the Arlington Memorial Bridge, which leads straight to the Lincoln Memorial and the west end of the National Mall.  I was actually surprised we were this close to the Mall – I thought we’d have to take the metro to get over there.  There is a very nice metro station a few blocks north of here (Rosslyn) that we will utilize later, but I think that the Mall is close enough that we can just hike over there.  When we want to head to stuff further out we can use the Metro.

All the pictures above (with bigger versions) are in the Day 1 gallery.  Stay tuned for more updates!

We drove over from Dayton today.  The trip wasn’t too bad – the weather was nice and traffic was not too bad until we got close to DC.

I intend to try and write a post per day detailing the things we see and do and including some pictures.  DC posts will be tagged with ‘dctrip2009‘ and I’ll be uploading my pictures to this gallery.