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| Checking in to the JW Marriott Hotel, just 2 blocks from the White House! |
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| View from hotel room overlooking Pennsylvania Avenue and the Washington Monument |
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| 3,800 cherry trees were at peak bloom! |
Thomas Jefferson Memorial and view back toward the White House
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| The Capital - so magnificent and grand. We were lucky enough to tour the original Supreme Court which is located inside the Capital. |
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| Interior of the Library of Congress - Wow! |
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| Thomas Jefferson sold 27,000 volumes of his personal library to begin the Library of Congress. They are kept all together in this room. The topics ranged from art to zoology and most books were digitized so you could flip through the pages on the computer screens located around the room. I do believe Jefferson probably read every single book and it was awe inspiring to stand in this room. |
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| The statue of Lincoln, designed by Daniel Chester French and carved by the Piccirilli brothers, is extremely beautiful. Some say his hands rest in the American Sign Language symbols for his initials A and L. |
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| WW II Memorial looking down the Reflecting Pool toward the Lincoln Memorial - its very grand and a fitting tribute to our soldiers and to our victory. |
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| Ford's Theater where Lincoln was shot. We were surprised to come upon this while just walking down a regular Washington street. |
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| We had a wonderful dinner in this tiny French restaurant directly across from Ford's Theater. |
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| The weather was so warm and lovely, we wandered the streets at night to get a feel for the city. |
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| The lobby of the Willard Hotel where Presidents-elect spend the night before their inauguration. It was next door to our hotel! |
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| It was raining as we packed to come home. |
As a place to visit and steep yourself in American history, I absolutely loved Washington. The architecture is glorious, the monuments are overwhelming in that they inspire such a feeling of awe for what our founding fathers accomplished. They were great intellectuals, great men, and that feeling stayed with me throughout our trip. I was overcome with emotion when I stepped into a small room in the National Gallery of Art that contained only 5 portraits, all by Gilbert Stuart, of five Presidents of the US. The portraits are so wonderfully done, so soft and life like that I almost felt as if I was in their presence - it was a moment I will not forget. We had a few disappointments. We were unable to get into the National Archives to see the Constitution and Declaration of Independence as the lines were wrapped around the block. And I wish we had not wasted time at the Museum of American History - it was dark and dirty and not well done. The one saving grace was standing next to George Washington's uniform - he was very tall and slender with long arms! When we planned this anniversary trip we had no idea it would be at the same time as the Cherry Blossom Festival and we would be part of the 1.5 million visitors in DC at his time! We managed to escape the worst of the crowds but, I do admit, I have never seen so many people in one place at one time! For me, as an artist, the highlights of the trip were the time we spent viewing the Phillips Collection, a gem of a museum with a collection of extraordinary art, and at the National Gallery. I will share some of those photos with you in my next posts as it is in those places that my artistic soul was stirred.
