Traveling Tuesday - Visiting our Nation's Capitol

Washington,  D.C.  I think I've visited about eight times over the last 40 years.  I still have places to see there.  And many of my pictures were slides that faded before I ever got around to digitizing them.  Plus, on several of these trips, I never thought to bring my camera.  Well, I never thought I'd be blogging about my travels.  So, I don't have a lot of photos to share, but here goes.

Where the President lives from the front and then the back, the White House:

The official guest house for the President since the main house is so small?  This is Blair House.

The Eisenhower Executive Office Building is across the street:

And Lafayette Square is around the corner with a statue of Lafayette (duh!)

Two doors down from Blair House in the Renwick Gallery where I spent a wonderful afternoon admiring the art, not having been invited to anyone's house for tea.

Also on Pennsylvania Avenue is the Willard Hotel which looks like an exquisite place to hold a wedding if you have 100 friends and $30,000.

I have no pictures of the Mall, museums on the mall or the Vietnam Memorial, which I first saw at night and which brought me to tears.  I do have photos of one of my favorite buildings, the Library of Congress.  Check out their site for some great photos.

It is one of the most incredible buildings I have ever seen and is probably not looked at by most tourists who are thinking of their library back home.

Being a finance person I also strolled past the Treasury Building.  My six year appointment to a committee for the Government Finance Officers Association is the reason I made several of those trips to D.C.

I had a wonderful tour of Arlington House, the home of Robert E. Lee and his wife, Mary Custis, a descendant of George Washington, until he joined the Confederacy and the Union took their home and lands away.  I was the only tourist there that morning and spent a considerable amount of time speaking with a park ranger on duty.

Here is the United States Capitol Building:

And a view of the entire mall area as seen from the rise at Arlington:

BTW, all of these photos were taken in January.  A few days later a huge storm hit the area and we were lucky to get on an earlier flight and get out before the airport was shut down.  As it was, we ended up getting home later than our original flight was supposed to get us here.

If you have never been to D.C., do consider it.  There is so much to see, be sure to plan your days out before you go, if you do.

I have now decided that I need to start digitizing all of my photos.  It is so much easier to find pics that are stored on my computer.  I know that I have more shots of D.C. around her someplace, but if we wait for me to find them I'll never blog again.  Hope you enjoyed this snapshot of our nation's capitol.