Washington D.C. Day 3

First of all, I forgot to add something that we saw on Day 2.  We saw the IRS building.

Now, on to Saturday.  It was an early morning.  We started out jumping on the Metro and heading to Arlington, VA.  We took the Metro to Rosslyn then walked to the Marine Corps Iwo Jima.

Walking to the Iwo Jima, this is the view we seen.  To the left, is the
Capitol then to the right of the Capitol is the Library of Congress.  Of
course, to the right of that is the Washington Monument.

 After seeing this view, the Iwo Jima was just right across the road.

After the Iwo Jima, we walked to Arlington Cemetery.  As we were walking to Arlington Cemetery, this is the view we seen.

The Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument and the Capitol

Just right down from this view was Arlington Cemetery.  We knew it would be huge but we had no idea just how huge it was. 

The entrance where we entered

View of grave sites

Props to Trent on this picture.  I love it!  You can see the Washington
Monument in the background

Me sitting and giving my feet a rest

Me and Trentie at the Cemetery

Women's Memorial at the Arlington Cemetery

The view of Lincoln Memorial from the cemetery

My feet were starting to improve however they were still hurting and we didn't want to take chances on making them worse again so after touring the place for a few ourselves, we paid a trolley to take us around the cemetery.  The below pictures are just random pictures of the cemetery.

The first stop the trolley made was at the Kennedy Grave sites

The Kennedy eternal flame

After that, the trolley stopped at the Tomb of the Unknowns where they do the Changing of the Guards.  That was definitely really neat to see. 

The building area in front of the Changing of the Guards area.

After this stop, the trolley took us to the Arlington House which is the old home of Robert E Lee.

The below pictures are some views that we had from the Arlington house.


I love this picture as it has 7 different landmarks in it.  From left to right, it
has the Lincoln Memorial, Old Post Office Tower, Washington Monument,
Capitol, Library of Congress, and Jefferson Memorial.  And then of course
the Arlington Cemetery below us.

The Capitol and the Library of Congress

Me and Trent at the Arlington house looking down over D.C.

 After the Arlington Cemetery, we went over to the Pentagon.

 

At the Pentagon, we went to see the Pentagon Memorial from 9/11.

The bench closest to us is the bench of the youngest person to die in
the 9/11 Pentagon attack.

The benches represent each person that died in the 9/11 Pentagon
attack

Pentagon from the 9/11 Pentagon Memorial

In this picture, you can see how the benches are facing 2 different directions.
The bench to the left almost in the middle of the picture is facing the
Pentagon which shows that person died in the Pentagon.  If you look
at some of the other benches, you can see they are facing the other
way which is the sky direction which shows those people died in the
airplane during the 9/11 Pentagon attacks

 

 

As we were getting ready to leave the Pentagon area, we saw an officer.  We got to talking to him and learned that he was actually in the Pentagon during the 9/11 attack.  He was a really nice guy to talk to.  He enjoys writing poems and although none of them are published, I think he should publish them.  He wrote a poem about 9/11 and he recited it to us.  It was awesome.  It was a pleasure to meet someone that was such a part of something so big in history.  He said he wasn't supposed to have his picture taken but he allowed us to take his picture with Trent.

We were going to go over to the Airforce Memorial while we were in Arlington however, we were in a hurry and we could see it from the Pentagon so we took pictures from there and moved on to our next destination.

Once we were done at the Pentagon, we jumped on the Metro and headed for Nationals Park to watch the Nationals vs. Cubs.  On this day, I was reminded several times that Mother's day was the next day.  In one of the Metro stations, there was a sign hanging that said "Smile, it's Mother's Day".  As that briefly made me saddened, I quickly got over it.  More goes along with that story that I will get to in a minute.  Anyways, before we left for D.C., Trent had decided that we wouldn't buy tickets before going, he would just scalp them once we got there.  I wasn't real sure about that idea us being in D.C. but I decided not to argue it with him.  Once we got off of the Metro and up the escalator, it takes you just about a block away from the field.  As we are walking, we hear coming from a Police van over a loud speaker saying "No buying or selling of tickets.  Strictly Prohibited.  Will go to Jail!  If you go to jail, you will miss the game anyways!"  I laughed and said I had wondered if it wouldn't be more difficult to scalp tickets in D.C.  We ended up just going to the box office and getting some tickets there.  We got tickets up in the nose bleeds in the 400 section for only $17 a piece with a PoPo discount.  We really didn't care where we sat as long as we were at a game.  We got in the gate, sat down and started watching the game as we were in the middle of the 1st inning already.  As we were watching this game, it really hit me and I think helped to comfort me a little.  I kind of laughed to myself as I didn't want to say anything to Trent as I didn't know how he would take it but to myself I thought, It's fine that we don't have kids.  Because we don't have kids, CHECK!  We marked another field off of our list that we had never seen before.  When we had our options of what we could do to achieve parenthood, one of them was to just not have them and a goal to be to visit all of the MLB fields in the U.S. so not having kids allowed us to check one off of our list this weekend.  It ended up being funny and I laughed because near the end of the game Trent said something like "You know, if we had kids, we probably wouldn't have gotten to do this".  I laughed and told him I was just thinking that earlier but didn't want to say anything to him.  Anyways, Trent was thrilled that we were able to go to this game as he had wanted to watch Strasburg pitch and he was pitching this game.  Unfortunately, he didn't do the greatest during this game.


Our seats from the Nose bleed section.  Hey, can't complain for $17
a piece

Me and Trentie at the game

Strasburg pitching

During the game, we just knew we were going to get poured on.  It looked like there was a huge rain brewing up.  It was raining in the distance but somehow ended up going around the field.

The sun trying to peep through on the side.

The game ended so we got up from our seats to leave.  We took the stairs down to the 3rd floor, escalator down to the 2nd floor and then jumped on the elevator to go down to the bottom level to leave.  When the elevator doors opened, we jumped on.  The elevator went down to the bottom level and stopped.  We all stood there waiting on the doors to open.  This is when we ran into 1 BIG problem.  The doors never opened.  It was sitting still but kept saying going up.  We told the guy standing beside the buttons to push the emergency button.  He yelled out and was very rude and hateful and said he couldn't reach it.  It was too crowded in there and he would have to get on his knees to push the button.  He was then told he would NOT get out of the elevator unless he pushed the emergency button.  He continued to be a major jerk.  Someone reached around him and pushed the Emergency button.  They called in on the intercom into the elevator and we told them we were stuck.  They said security would be on their way.  It wasn't no time until we heard people outside trying to help.  They were prying on the door and trying their best to get it open.  They were trying so hard, the elevator was shaking from them pushing and prying so much.  The people would randomly call in on the intercom to check on everyone.  There were 12 people total in the elevator including me and Trent.  In those 12 people, 2 of them were in wheelchairs.  Everyone was FINE!  No medical emergencies or anything.  Every time they would call in to check on us, the guy by the buttons was such a smart butt and VERY rude.  He kept telling them that people were in distress.  Let me remind you, everyone was FINE!  Yes, it was hot in there but that was it.  Yes, it got to the point that I could see people would get scared but out of the 12 people on the elevator, 7 of them were very rude, disrespectful and to be quiet honest, just pains in the butt.  At times, so many people were trying to talk that the people calling in on the intercom TRYING TO HELP US couldn't even understand us because they were being so rude and yelling at the same time.  The point that I started getting slightly nervous was when the elevator was shaking from them prying and pushing so much and then they said it was something that had never experienced before.  We were truly stuck.  Finally after 25 minutes of being stuck in this elevator full of completely rude jerks, the elevator opened and everyone went flowing out of it continuing to be complete jerks.  One woman milked it as good as she could and said she needed a nebulizer (breathing) treatment and everyone else left while me and Trent stood behind.  Instance # 2 that my hubby reminded me of why I love and admire him so much because he not only stood behind but he took the time to shake each and every singe firefighters hand and tell them Thank you for getting us out.  Not one other person Thanked them.  There was a guy in a suit standing there that worked for Nationals Park and he told us to follow him because he was going to bring us back and make everything right.  We followed him to where we met up with another guy that worked at the field named Billy.  Billy took all of our information and we all made plans to meet at the Centerfield gate the next day and they would be taking care of us for tomorrows game.  He even went as far as saying that we would be WELL taken care of.  We were ecstatic.  How much better could it get!  I could handle 25 minutes of being stuck in an elevator with 10 other people 7 of which were total jerks to get to come back to another game for free.  By him saying we would be well taken care of, we were guessing at where we would be sitting.  We figured we would either be behind home plate of we would get free food.  The next day couldn't get here fast enough as we were excited about going to another game and better yet, we didn't have to pay for it.

Trent giving a Thumbs up in the Metro station for getting free tickets
to tomorrows game just because we got stuck on the elevator.

We took the Metro back to the nearest station to our hotel but decided to go ahead and walk to the White House since it was dark out so we could see it at night.  The rain missed us at the field but when we got off the Metro station, it was raining.

We didn't let the rain ruin our fun and we walked to the White House anyways.

 We also saw a glimpse of the Capitol at night from the White House

After the walk to the White House, we called it a night and went to the room.  We knew we had another early morning ahead because we had a lot to fit in before the game that started at 1:35.  We figured since we were getting free tickets, we just couldn't miss it.