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Today, we got up and got our stuff together and headed on towards New York City! The toll roads between Washington DC and New York City are pretty crazy. There was a $2, $5, and $2 toll before we ever got on to the New Jersey Turnpike, then there was around an $8 toll on it. We got to the Travel Inn and checked in. The first thing we noticed was that the room (and the entire hotel) smelled like ORANGE cleaner. Something with that horrible fake citrus sent. It is still in the air some and it hurts me.

After we got checked in and parked, which was an ordeal because our hotel’s parking garage is only one level and TINY, we went to wander. We ended up wandering down to Times Square. There is SO MUCH amazing technology going on at Times Square. There are signs of all shapes and sizes, most of them fully colored, etc.

We then went to the Hudson River and watched the amazing fireworks display that Macy’s put on, synced with 6 barges showing the exact same thing. Lots of millions of dollars went up in smoke tonight.

After the fireworks, we joined the flashmob of people and got back to our hotel room. I will be taking a LOT more pictures of Times Square, and those will be up and coming ASAP.

The only thing we had originally scheduled for this day was the tour of the Capitol building.

We had an early afternoon tour, so we didn’t leave the hotel until much later than we had been leaving.

At the capitol building, they basically had to strip search us to let us in the building. And they for sure wanted us to know that we could not take anything in that was a prohibited item, which included liquids of any kind and anything that “resembles or is a weapon” such as pocket knives, blades of any kind, sharp nail files, or fingernail clippers. The tour itself was alright, but not amazing. It was on a weekend, so we didn’t actually get to see the House or Senate floors, so the tour only lasted about 20 minutes.
They offer a cell phone self-guided tour of the exhibition hall there, but we did not have time to do that. I would have liked to, because it seemed interesting, just from the first few minutes I listened to.
We ate a late lunch at the restaurant there at the Capitol building. One thing we have noticed about these areas is that everything is much more expensive. For example, I haven’t been able to find a 20 oz soda for less than $2 since one of the first stops we made back in Tennessee.
After we left the inside of the Capitol building, we went outside and took pictures of the building. I have an awesome panoramic view I was able to stitch together, to be posted ASAP.
We then went by the Supreme Court building, and went into the Library of Congress, where my parents almost got arrested for going into a part of the library that was not open to the public. We then went to union station, via the metro, even though it would have been much easier to walk, we later found out.

Union Station was awesome. two levels of shops, bottom level mostly food court. Actual names of restaurants I’d heard of before. It is also the home of Washington DC’s AmTrak station. One of these days, I want to take a trip on an AmTrak train. I think that would be awesome.

At Union Station, we also caught a Monuments by Twilight tour that took us to the FD Roosevelt Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, the Jefferson Memorial, and the World War II Memorial. That tour was awesome, mostly because of our tour guide, who I think might have been high while he was giving us the tour.

After that tour, which lasted over 3 hours, we went back to the hotel for the night.

*Editor’s Note: I will add pictures when I can, but it probably won’t be until Wednesday because the internet here at the Travel Inn in New York City is terrible and it is a pay-per-day basis, and I refuse to pay $6 again for 24 hours worth of access to this crappy connection.*

First of all, I didn’t post day 2 last night because I spent all the computing time I wanted to spend trying to figure out why my pictures wouldn’t upload to here correctly. I did some web searches, made some modifications, and nothing seemed to work correctly. So, I’ve created a workaround for the time being. For now, this is going to be a text only update. I will try to get some pictures on here ASAP!

Day 2:
We woke up and packed up from Pigeon Forge, ate the free continental breakfast from our hotel, and were off towards DC. We crossed over into a new state I’d never been in before: Virginia!

We stopped for lunch at Applebees in Wytheville, Virginia. It was yummy. We also saw a very large pencil on a bookstore, and a very large paint can on a paint store. I have pics of these, but as I said, I can’t get pics to upload to my blog properly right now.

From there, it was smooth sailing the rest of the way except for right outside of D.C. That’s where we hit the traffic. It took about an hour to go the last 10 miles to get to our hotel in Arlington. We decided that we were going to park the car at the hotel and not move it again until it was time to leave D.C.

We walked to the Metro Rail station closest to our hotel and went to the ChinaTown area of D.C. This was an…..interesting part of town I’d say. We were recommended to go there to eat by the Station Manager of the Metro Station. We’re thinking we might have seen some “ladies of the night” there.. not quite sure. We ended up eating at McDonalds because we had the big lunch at Applebees.

Afterwards, we took the Metro back to the Smithsonian station and went over to the Washington Monument. That thing is HUGE. Standing over 500 feet tall, it towers above most everything else in DC and can be seen from lots of places. We took pictures as best we could in the dark and then walked back to our station.

It ended up, the station we got there on (Smithsonian) had already closed, so we had to walk about half a mile down to the next station (Federal Triangle). From there, we went back to the hotel for the night.

Day 3:
We got up at around 8 in order to get ready and go to our White House Tour at 10:30. We boarded the Crystal City metro station again and road it to McPherson, the exit closest to the White House. By the time we had “ooh”ed and “ahh”ed over it for a few minutes, took a few pictures with our phones, and got to where we were supposed to be, we only had to wait in line about 15 minutes. We were actually let in a little bit earlier than our time was scheduled. That turned out to be a good thing for us. None of us had our cameras with us, because they don’t allow cameras inside the White House at all. And cell phones have to be turned off. And, while the tour is self guided unless you have came up with your own tour guide somehow (We’re not sure how these people had their tour guides. Not sure if they were senators or what…) there is someone in every room watching to make sure no pictures are being taken. These people also know a little information about the room they are in, and can provide it. Getting to go inside the home of the president was pretty cool. I just really wish I could have taken some pictures.

After the White House tour, we took the Metro back to our hotel to gather the belongings we wanted to take with us that weren’t allowed inside the White House. We went to the Crystal City shops to look around and grab some lunch. I had a burger and fries from a place called Philadelphia Mike’s. We designed a grand scheme of everything we wanted to do for the rest of the day, and it totally didn’t work out for us.

The plan was originally this: take the Metro stops, in order, for all the different places we wanted to go.

• Pentagon; just to see if we could see it.
• Arlington Cemetary; to see Kennedy’s grave and the Tomb of the Unknowns
• Rosslyn; Iwo Jima memorial
• Federal Triangle; Old Post Office
• Smithsonian; the monuments
• Archives-Navy Memorial; to see the Archives Building
• Capitol South; Library of Congress

And here’s what actually happened. After we left the Crystal Shops, we stopped at the Pentagon station and got off. We walked up and saw the side of the Pentagon building which is really unimpressive from the side. It does not look 5 sided at all. Then we got back on the train and went to the Arlington Cemetery station. We got off there and had to walk a good 10 minutes to get to the gates of the Cemetery. From then, we were there a good two and a half hours. We saw the Kennedy Tombs, Letisha saw the Arlington House, then we watched the Guards Change Ceromony at the Tomb of the Unknowns (Video to come!). After we left there, it was too late to do most of the other things we had planned. We ended up going straight to Federal Triangle and looking for something to eat.

We saw a sign for the Ronald Reagan Building food court. We went across the street to that building and ended up having to be almost strip searched to get in. We couldn’t determine why security was so tight, but it definitely was. The food court there was a typical food court. There was a much bigger selection there than the food court at the Crystal Shops. I had bourbon chicken and rice from a Cajun cooking place. It was pretty good.

From there, we went to the Washington Monument because we had a tour set up for 7pm. Not necessarily a tour as much as going to the top of the thing. I did not. My mom, dad, and sister did. Then, we walked back up to the White House to take some more pictures and ended up finding some souvenir stands on the side of the road there. The things they were selling there were much cheaper than the stores that were inside buildings and it was the same exact stuff. I got a T-Shirt, two keychains, and lanyard, and some souvenir coins. They are awesome looking. I will try to get a pic as soon as I can.

From there, we took a few pictures of the White House, then boarded the Metro and headed back to the hotel. These last two days were completely loaded. Today, we walked A LOT. Tomorrow, the only thing we have scheduled is a tour of the Capitol building. I assume there’s probably no photography there either. Mom wants to do a tour of some kind so that we don’t have to walk all day like we did today. I am all for that. My feet are pretty much killing me right now.

It was an enjoyable time. I can honestly say, there was not a time today when I was bored. So…. that’s much better than the day we spent in TN!!!

More tomorrow night, hopefully with pictures if I can get it to work!