The Levee Family: Washington D.C.

Here they are - a few select pictures from our 10 Year Anniversary trip to D.C. We had a fabulous time! I think the best part was just being by ourselves - as husband and wife - not mommy and daddy!

This is a shot of the neat shops and the Hotel Monaco in Old Town Alexandria, VA. We loved staying in Alexandria. There is so much history in this small town, just across the river from DC. In 'old town' the atmosphere was great. The streets were lined with neat shops and restaurants and had a great night life. Most people started hitting the streets to shop around 10 am but later in the day, the restaurants didn't really fill up until 8 or so.

This is the National Cathedral - it is so big you can't really get it all in 1 picture. It took almost 90 years to officially by complete.

The front lawn of the White House. We didn't go through the long process to get approval for a tour, so this is as close as we got!

This is a picture taken from Arlington National Cemetery. That was incredibly awe inspiring. One thing that I thought was pretty difficult was that while all these hundreds of visitors are walking all over the cemetery, there would be at least one funeral going on every day - with most days having more than 1 funeral. That would be particularly difficult if you were actually there to bury a loved one. We went and saw the "Eternal Flame" for President Kennedy and we saw the tomb of the unknowns along with several other special statues and monuments.

"Freedom Is Not Free". I took this picture to sum up the general feelings after visiting all the different war memorials. They left you speechless for sure. One funny thing about the memorials: they want the visitors to be so respectful - and I completely agree, but the signs say "quiet please, no food or drinks and no chewing gum". I thought the gum thing was funny.

This is the Hope Diamond. It is housed in the Natural History Museum.

There's good ole' Lincoln! Sitting up high.

This is a picture of the house at Mount Vernon. The 4ooo +acres estate of George Washington. This was my favorite sight to visit. Maybe because I had visited most of the other places before. George Washington was such a family man and inventive farmer. He came back to his estate after all his political endeavors and ended up dying in the master bedroom of an illness similar to strep throat - that could've been cured if antibiotics had been discovered at that time. The actual bed frame where he died is still in the room. It's pretty cool that the house has been preserved so well since it was built in the early t0 mid 17oo's. Shortly after Martha Washington died the house was taken over by a historical group to take care of it.

This is one of my favorite shots of the capital with the Washington Monument in the foreground. This was taken from the Lincoln Memorial.

We braved the heat and 2 rain showers for 5 hours waiting for the National 4th of July Concert. We were sitting on the lawn of the Capital and you can see how crowded the steps of the Capital were. We had a great seat for the concert and thought we would also be able to see the fireworks, but we couldn't. We had to get up and move, quickly, to see the fireworks as the symphony played the traditional John Phillip Sousa Marches.