Washington, Day 3

Addy and company leave for home tomorrow, so today was our last chance to see all the things on our "must do" list. It took us until almost 10 pm, but we got it done!

We started at the National Zoo.

Visiting the Giant Pandas

and seeing baby Bao Bao was first on our agenda.

We also saw the elephant exhibit

and the zebras (Addy's request).

It was so hot - in the 90's with high humidity - that we gave up after that and retreated back to the Metro.

One thing Addy has talked about since getting off the plane is visiting Ford's Theater, so that was our next stop.

The museum was interesting - they have the derringer Wilkes Booth used to shoot President Lincoln, among lots of other things -

and the actual theater has several artifacts from Lincoln's time, including the picture of George Washington that was used on the Presidential box the night the Lincoln died,

but the best part was the ranger's talk about the conspiracy and the events leading up to the fateful shot. Very informative and well done.

We'd planned to continue our tour across the street in the home where Lincoln died (above), but the line was looooooong and slow, so we headed down the street to the International Spy Museum - on Rachel's must see list. Admission prices were so high though that we decided to limit our visit to the gift shop and head home.

Last on our list was the Lincoln Memorial. There are no Metro stops close to the monument, so once it started to get dark, we drove back into DC from our apartment in Arlington.

So glad we did! The monuments at night are spectacular.

There were dark clouds and lightening a few miles away, but the rain held off and the night temps were perfect.

Addy was impressed with the Lincoln Memorial.

As a kid - maybe in junior high? - I had to memorize, and recite, Lincoln's Gettysburg address. I still remember the first paragraph, but that's about all.

We walked through the Vietnam Memorial, but it was too dark for photos. Our last stop was the Korean War Veterans Memorial.

Of all the monuments and memorials in DC, this one is my favorite.

So powerful and human and personal. You get a real sense of the lives that were lost, and see them as people, not just statistics.

So glad we had a chance to see it before our DC trip ended.

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