Washington DC - Day 1

This year, for my birthday, Marc took me to Washington DC for a long weekend.  I had never been there before, and I was so excited to see EVERYTHING!  We had three days full of site-seeing, building tours, and walking.

We left Pittsburgh at 5:00AM, Friday morning.  It took us about 4.5 hours to get to the city.  We were lucky to check into our hotel early, so that was the first thing we did.  Then we set out.  Below are just a few pictures of some of the sites we saw.

This was our first view of the Capitol Building, as we were walking towards it.  We had a scheduled tour for this building.  We got to see the main halls, the dome, and a video about the history of the building.

The dome of the Capitol Building.  It is said to be George Washington surrounded by thirteen maidens (one representing each state). 

From the Capitol Building, we went to see the US Supreme Court.  Court was not in session, and no tours were available, but we walked around to a few of the exhibits offered to us inside.

 

The third building we visited was the Library of Congress.  We joined a group and took a 35 minute tour.  I was more impressed with the architecture inside, than the contents.  This is a portion of the ceiling.  The entire ceiling is covered with Italian mosaics.  The mosaics were actually made in Italy, then shipped to the US for installation.

After the Library of Congress, we roamed around to some of the memorial statues that were in the area.  Our first stop was the Ulysses S. Grant Statue.

William Howard Taft Memorial

The statue of Thomas Jefferson in the Jefferson Memorial.

We got back to our hotel around 7:30PM the first night.  Marc and I decided to order pizza for dinner.  There was a mom-and-pop pizza joint not too far from us.  The hotel was advertising them, so we went with it.  Just as Marc got back, it started to pour.  We ate our pizza in our hotel room, and watched the intense lightening from the window.