DC Continued

Day 2:  Spent the morning at the Arlington Cemetery where we saw...

the Kennedy Eternal Flame and grave sites...

the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, as well as the Changing of the Guards and a special ceremony prior to the change:

the Iwo Jima memorial:

Next we visited the original DC Post Office where we were able to go to the top of the bell tower to get good views of the city:

After lunch, we went to the Museum of National History.  This museum was awesome except for the CRAZY amount of people that were also visiting.  My favorite parts were the butterfly exhibit and the temporary exhibit called "X-Ray Vision:  Fish Inside Out"

Here is the inspiration for the butterfly garden that I MUST now create! 

These were x-ray images blown up into artwork, and was absolutely stunning.  I found this exhibit so fascinating, but Dad zoomed right through it! :)

You can see the mollusks this little guy recently ate...

After we left the museum, we walked to the White House...which ALSO had a TON of people crowding around.  I was a little disappointed that I didn't get to see the First Dogs out playing in the front yard. :)

Here's just a random picture of one of the escalators.  This one was HUGE.  Angel--you would have been freaking out!!  And here's Dad taking yet another opportunity to rest! :)

This was at the river just before the amazing fireworks show with Japanese fireworks...and just before my camera and phone died!  So no awesome-fireworks-pics.

By the way, the main purpose of this trip was to see all the cherry blossoms since we were visiting DURING the Cherry Blossom Festival.  This tree on the left you see (along with all the hundreds of other cherry trees in this area) is a cherry tree that bloomed about a week ago.   : | 

So that sums up day 2, and on day 3 we spent our remaining time at the Zoo where the highlight was watching the pandas.  But we also spent about 30 minutes watching this 2.5 week old howler monkey.  He was clinging to its mother the entire time.  What was so cute though was watching the daddy monkey interact--he kept petting his little son...one of the cutest things I've ever seen!

Well, that's about it.  Lessons learned:  bring my GOOD camera next time...and get Dad some of those wheelie shoes :)

♥ Natalie