Washington, D.C. - These Keds Were Made For Walking

April 07, 2010

For our final day in D.C., I suggested to my husband that we take a double decker bus tour of the city. His response? Why should we pay for a tour when we can go everywhere we want by foot or train! (Did I mention that it was a record-breaking ninety-some degree day?)

Our first stop by train and by foot was Arlington National Cemetery.

It's a place both somber and breathtaking.,

We paid tribute to the unknown soldier,

and counted the price

of our freedom.

Our next stop on the Metro -

lunch at Union Station.

An active train depot, Union Station is another example of beautiful architecture. Filled with shops and restaurants, we recharged for our next stop.

Two train stops and three walking blocks later, we arrived at the Kids' much anticipated attraction, the International Spy museum.

Here, the kids assumed a different identity, crawled through heating vents to spy on us (the parents), learned the tricks to unlocking doors without keys and other such useful information. I even had a chance to revisit the cooking icon, Julia Child in her pre-french cooking days when she worked for the CIA.

Another ride on the Metro and we are back to Union Square for Dinner.

After dinner, we took the Metro back to the stop closest to our hotel. We were now only 1/2 mile from our walking night tour of The White House.

Truly an amazing residence, we stopped and prayed for our President and his family.

At 8:30 at night, after having logged twenty-some thousand steps on Samuel's pedometer, my husband finally broke down and found us a cab. He rode shotgun while the four kids and I crammed into the back seat of a Mercury Marquis. The back car door only opened from the outside. The Ethiopian cab driver, however, played some awesome jazz on the radio! All this trouble, just so I could snap these two pictures of the Lincoln Memorial.