Day 218 - Canberra on steroids

Washington DC

We had booked a free walking tour of the major sights in DC for the afternoon, so we caught the Metro to the massive Arlington Cemetery.

Once there we walked up to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and arrived in time to watch the changing of the guard. One of the soldiers addressed the crowd and told them to be silent and upstanding, then the changing ceremony commenced. It continued to a point where the guards had swapped and everyone thought it was over, so the crowd started murmuring and chatting amongst themselves. All of a sudden the lone soldier starts yelling and tells everyone off in quite an aggressive manner, it was quite a surprise and actually quite funny, lucky we didn't laugh out loud as he sounded like he was liable to shoot someone. The ceremony continued a bit longer with the laying of a wreath.

Be quiet or I'll shoot!

From there we headed to the JFK memorial and we could clearly see the Pentagon in the distance and planes flying over head as we contemplated how scary it would have been for the people who were standing here and saw the plane crashing on September 11.

We caught the train to the start of our walking tour near the Washington Monument. We had signed up for the four hour tour, and our first stop was between the White House and the Washington Monument before moving on to visit the World War II, Korean and Vietnam War Memorials.

The composition of the Martin Luther King Jr Memorial is thought provoking and a bit different to the others. The Lincoln Memorial is a massive statue, as is the Jefferson Memorial, but the Roosevelt Memorial is different again as it covers quite a large area and consists of multiple outdoor rooms, and as a result is a much more effective tribute (in our opinion anyway).